


The Reminiscences of Martin Blackwood, Post Mortem

by AuralQueer



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Fluff, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Lonely! Martin, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Peter Lukas is a creep, Slow Burn, The Major Character Death in this fic has already happened in canon as of February 2020, Web! Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 16:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 108,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21431323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuralQueer/pseuds/AuralQueer
Summary: Martin Blackwood is a reporter for The Observer newspaper. He’s a normal enough man, and he’d like to keep it that way. He doesn’t have much reason to suspect anything too far out of the ordinary when he heads down to University College Hospital on a hunch to visit the man who may or may not be dead.The man’s name is Jonathan Sims: a failed academic by all accounts, though what he’d been doing before the explosion that threw him into a six month coma is at the mercy of baseless public speculation. Now he’s lying in an empty ward with no heartbeat, dreaming.It seems like enough to fill a slow news day.A Victorian AU. Herein lies artistic licence, ghosts, and the slowest burn you ever did see.
Relationships: Background Peter Lukas / Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims & Georgie Barker, Martin Blackwood & Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 1189
Kudos: 1262





	1. A Most Unusual Phenomenon

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my two amazing beta readers, A and [BromeliadDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BromeliadDreams/profile) , who've helped me get this massive thing done! We'll be updating on Fridays and Mondays we finish the edit. But the fic is complete, and will be completed! 
> 
> Also thank you to the lovely Marina Vermillion, who read this whilst I was writing it and kept me motivated. I really hope all of you enjoy it! Thanks to this fandom for being wonderful, and hopefully this helps tide you through the hiatus!!

The man on the table was, objectively, beautiful. He was also, in many ways, objectively dead. Indeed, the latter fact had been the source of some consternation among the staff at University College Hospital, and before that at St Bartholomew’s, where the man had initially been checked in. This consternation, of course, was the reason that Martin Blackwood was there at all. He needed a story: and The Man Who May or May Not Be Dead was as good as any other for a slow weekend in a long summer.  
  
So, Martin sat next to the man’s bed in a quiet, cold ward and stared at the fluttering of his eyelids - moving with impossible dreams - and tried to remember where he’d been going with the sentence he’d started in his notebook half an hour ago. The man, Jonathan Sims according to the one wealthy young spinster who seemed to know anything about him, was not yet thirty.  
  
He had rich, smooth brown skin, trodden with spiderweb creases around the corners of his eyes and mouth and running over his forehead, now mostly eased in sleep. Wavy black hair threaded with grey had fallen flat and limp after months of unconsciousness, but it wasn’t hard to see how it could once have been handsome. Martin briefly entertained the hope that he had rather lovely eyes.  
  
He clearly didn’t eat enough: though again, months of atrophy hadn’t helped. He was a very slender man who might once have been wiry, before whatever happened to leave him in this state. He had long, elegant hands, more those of an aristocrat than anything else. But his fingernails were, Martin cannot help but notice somewhat endearingly, bitten to the quick. And no aristocrat would ever let their offspring past adolescence with such a habit in tact.  
  
Indeed, sitting and staring at Jonathan’s face - somewhat drawn in what might be fear, or pain - Martin realises that he still has very little information about him.  
  
He knows the salient details for the story, of course: the man has spent six months without a heartbeat or apparently breathing, but his eyelids have been moving. There are half a dozen theories about the strange effects of death on corpses, but the most outlandish of all is that perpetuated by Jonathan’s friend, the spinster Georgie Barker, who claims that he isn’t dead at all.  
  
Staring at him, the rich colour in his cheeks, and the soft movement of his features, Martin cannot help but agree with her. Jonathan doesn’t look dead.  
  
The staff and students at University College Hospital are divided on the subject themselves, and after months of observation plan at last to bring Jonathan’s body to the Old Operating Theatre - with a view to perform a dissection into the chest cavity in front of a very select audience, in the hopes that someone will be able to figure out what exactly is going on.  
  
The hacks who meander outside the hospital claim Jonathan has been possessed, or in the case of the preachers, given over to the devil. The doctors are resolute in their denial, though their decision to avoid the ward ever since Martin has arrived, and indeed not to let it be used by any other patients, stands as testament to their superstition.  
  
Space in hospitals is always dearly needed, and the staff’s claim that Jonathan may be infectious falls somewhat flat when one is presented with the man himself: clean, weak, and despite six months of sleep, still looking tired.  
  
Of course, Georgie Barker is vehemently against the vivisection - claiming that the very notion is profoundly inhumane, and threatening a very expensive and lengthy court case against the hospital if they proceed. The Barker family had made a decent fortune on their trade before Ms Barker’s parents were tragically killed at sea, but Martin doubts she can outbid the University of London.  
  
So in all likelihood Jonathan will be dissected in front of a full and fearful audience. For his sake, Martin hopes that he really is dead, and the appearance of life that clings to him so convincingly is just that, a ghoulish appearance.  
  
Selfishly, though, somewhere in his mind - the part of Martin that daydreams - half hopes Jonathan is alive. He wants to know more about him: wants to know his profession, and his likes and his dislikes, and what his voice sounds like. He wants to know how his face moves when he laughs.  
  
It’s not a strong desire: in the end, Jonathan Sims is a medical curiosity, a corpse on a bed. But he’s a beautiful corpse, and it’s hard not to wonder who he might have been once. There’s a lovely sort of poetry to it, and Martin’s always loved poetry.  
  
Still, Martin also has a job to do. So he finishes making what perfunctory notes he can and carefully crosses out the fragment of poetry he’d written on impulse, about a man walking in the valley of the shadow of death, skin brown in the sun and shining like bronze, silver gilding his black hair like a blessing. Then Martin Blackwood gets to his feet, and with one last look at Jonathan Sims, he turns to leave.  
  
The ward on which Jonathan has been kept is cold and grey - it’s been kept cold, half out of a fear that the body may start decomposing in anything warmer. But Martin doesn’t think it’s the cold that makes him shiver when he brushes the shoulder of another man, entering the room as Martin leaves it. This man is another civilian, wearing a smart enough jacket, though nothing that speaks to any wealth. He has deep brown skin, and in the split second that Martin catches a look at his face, he can see that he’s handsome.  
  
Then Martin is back in the hospital proper. It’s full of people now, and the noise is like sandpaper in contrast to the icy silence of Jonathan’s ward. Footsteps echo, voices call and respond, there are adults and children crying and the soft low moans of people not yet given anything to help with the pain. Martin takes a moment to shut his eyes and push it all down. The sounds become muted, and the people fade around the edges, and he can breathe easy again.  
  
His plan is to head back to the office. He thinks he can probably get the story written up and hand it over to Gerry before the end of the day, and it’s always nice not to have anything hanging over him on the weekend. Well, not to have any more than the usual things.  
  
That’s Martin’s plan. And it’s only when he reaches his first turning, a turning that will take him away from a direct line of sight to Jonathan’s ward, that he hesitates.  
  
It’s not his business. Maybe the handsome man who’s stopping in to visit is an old friend. Maybe he’s a professor from the university. Maybe he’s another reporter. There are any number of mundane explanations for his appearance and even if there weren’t it really wouldn’t be Martin’s business anyway. He has no reason to care about Jonathan and he doesn’t, beyond a passing curiosity and a poignant moment with a corpse. Jonathan has provided at most a breath of inspiration for a poem Martin was already teasing in his head: something about the beautiful transience of mortal things.  
  
Inspiration was certainly not a good enough reason to get into an altercation with a stranger over a dead man’s body.  
  
But.  
  
There was also the fact that the very handsome man who had walked into Jonathan’s ward was undeniably tied to the thing that was sometimes referred to as The End. And if anyone could make a decision or indeed a change, once and for all, that pushed Jonathan either back into whatever life he’d been living or over the edge into oblivion then an Avatar of The End would be best suited to it.  
  
In short, if anyone or anything could kill Jonathan Sims, it would be The End. And The End had apparently decided to drop in during visiting hours.  
  
All of this is academic if Jonathan really is dead, though - and Martin can’t help but notice that not only is his prevaricating wasting potentially precious time, he is also beginning to be noticed by the ward staff, previously too harassed to pay him much mind.  
  
Martin concentrates, and the exhausted looking nurse who’d been glancing at him every few minutes lets her gaze slide away, soft brow creasing in mild confusion before a child cries out and she turns away with more urgent things on her mind than one more stranger in the crowd.  
  
Martin worries his lip and stares back down the corridor towards the closed white painted wooden doors of the ward. He could just leave. He should leave. He has a job to do, and no business getting involved in the affairs of strangers. In fact it was exactly this kind of thing that made him decide to stop - well. He has a life. It’s mostly normal. He can still walk away.  
  
The noise of horses and carts and dogs and street hawkers filters dimly through the heavy brick walls of the hospital. Martin Blackwood sighs, and marches back down the corridor towards Jonathan Sims.  
  
He’s so taken up in the decision that he doesn’t notice the short, plump redheaded young woman marching down the corridor with him, until the handsome dark skinned man steps out of the room and bumps into them both.  
  
The man starts to apologise with an easy, beautiful smile, and the short redhead bristles. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to -,”  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
Martin blinks and stares, finally noticing the woman next to him. With her comes the hospital, and the rest of the mundane noise of life, and Martin winces. The woman doesn’t seem to notice, all of her attention is focused on the handsome man in front of them and the room behind him. Martin doesn’t really mind: he’s used to going unnoticed.  
  
The handsome man drops his shoulders, hands out in an appeasing gesture, looking far more relaxed than a stranger visiting a dead man perhaps ought to be. “Oh, I’m sorry, my name’s Antonio Blake, I’m a -,”  
  
“Friend of Jon’s?” The woman makes no effort to hide her skepticism, and Martin tries to remember the last time he saw anyone being this rude to a stranger. Probably the fish market last Saturday.  
  
Antonio makes a good show of looking embarrassed, and even Martin doesn’t believe it. “Well, we haven’t spoken in a while, but I heard -,”  
  
“I’m sure you did, Mr Blake. And what were you planning to do here?” There’s something steely in the woman’s voice: something that sounds like she suspects Blake of activity far more sinister than dropping off a bouquet, or even just gawking.  
  
Blake lets a little of the affable stranger act fall, his features hardening into an expression both clever and somewhat cruel. “Nothing untoward, Ms Barker, I assure you.”  
  
“And I’ll thank you to leave me to make my own conclusions, Mr Blake. “ Ms Barker lifts her chin, and meets Blake’s deep brown eyes. Martin is quite certain at this point that both of them have forgotten that he’s there, but he doesn’t really mind. It’s much more interesting to watch.  
  
Blake, for his part, inclines his head, ever the gentleman. His lips, though, are curved in the ghost of a smile that doesn’t seem entirely appropriate to the occasion. “Of course, Ms Barker.”  
  
Ms Barker moves forward and Martin nearly reaches out to stop her. Quite apart from the distinct difference in their heights, a deep finality emanates from Blake like a living shadow. If Ms Barker notices it doesn’t seem to bother her. Instead she steps through it, standing between Blake and the door, and raises her eyebrows at him.  
  
“Goodbye then Mr Blake. I trust you won’t make a fuss with so many witnesses.” Ms Barker’s voice is still even, and she meets Blake’s eyes. Martin isn’t sure he could’ve done the same, even without the supernatural element. He’s not really sure how someone as wealthy as Georgie Barker could have come into adulthood with this little concern for propriety. Though it may be a consequence of Blake’s personhood, or lack thereof.  
  
Blake, for his part, doesn’t drop the act. Instead he gives Barker another, tighter smile and turns on his heel - walking at a brisk pace down the corridor and away. His eyes slide over Martin but they don’t pause, and it’s only when he’s turned the corner that Martin follows Ms Barker back inside the ward.  
  
He decides not to make his presence known at first - he’s not entirely sure Ms Barker will let him stay if he does. So instead he wraps fog around himself like a blanket and steps closer. He can’t quite explain his own anxiety as he checks over Jonathan’s body whilst Ms Barker does the same, trying to see whether Blake had done anything to him. But Jonathan appears unchanged - if anything he looks a little better. There’s more colour in his cheeks, and his lips are more red than grey. His eyelids are still moving, and his brow is still faintly furrowed with whatever dreams are dancing through his head.  
  
In fact, as far as Martin can tell the only thing that has changed is that there’s a fountain pen, lying still on a thick sheaf of paper, covered in messy handwriting. Martin could have sworn it wasn’t there before, and he steps over to it, curious.  
  
Meanwhile, Georgie has pulled up the chair that Martin was sitting in. She undoes her bonnet and a pile of coppery hair comes loose as she does so, barely maintaining its place in a haphazard bun on her head. She drops her bag and her umbrella, and then she reaches out with one plump freckled hand for Jonathan’s. She looks tired: deep purple bags under her eyes bright against her fair skin. She rubs her thumb over Jonathan’s knuckles in a gesture of such intimacy that Martin has to look away, feeling the sting of it in his chest.  
  
Ms Barker says, softly, “Please wake up, Jon. We need you back. I need you back.” She sighs. “You can’t stay there forever, you know.” Her expression is soft and fond, and she reaches up and brushes back a few stray curls clinging to Jonathan’s temples. Martin’s fingers twitch with the irrational urge to do the same.  
  
He really should leave.  
  
He’s been less than useless, as it turns out, and Jonathan is fine - or as fine as he had been before, whatever that meant. Besides, watching this is more painful than he had anticipated, and it isn’t worth the tempting song of loneliness that’s aching out of Ms Barker like a river as she tries to call her friend back from whatever precipice for which he’d left her.  
  
Martin has all but made his decision when one of the nurses comes in and asks Ms Barker to step outside. She does so reluctantly, and the nurse busies herself checking over Jonathan and giving him a quick scrub down with a sponge and a bucket of warm, soapy water. Martin averts his eyes, and cannot keep his mind from wandering to the thousand times or more he’d done this for his mother. The nurse dries Jon off, reclothes him, sets him back in his bed and leaves. Ms Barker doesn’t come back in. Martin imagines perhaps she’s seen fit to visit the ladies room while she waits, or go and get some kind of refreshment. Judging by the fact she’s left her things here, she certainly plans to remain for the rest of the day’s visiting hours.  
  
This is Martin’s chance. So he moves to leave but on the way, that piece of paper - the one that hadn’t been there before - catches his eye. He’s not really sure why, afterwards. Maybe it’s the low afternoon sun and what watery rays have made it through the window, glinting off the black shell of the pen. Maybe it’s the spider skittering over the bedside table. Maybe it’s just his own curiosity.  
  
But Martin steps back towards the bed - carefully skirting Jonathan’s unconscious body, and moves to the table. The writing is messy, but he can make out the first sentence: “My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name Antonio Blake, but I don’t really think either name has much meaning for me any more.”  
  
Intrigued, Martin reaches out and picks up the piece of paper.  
  
And Jonathan Sims wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Um, ok, right. My name is Martin Blackwood. I’m - I was a reporter for The Observer newspaper. I was meant to focus on the natural sciences: after Mr Darwins’ book, it seemed like we were achieving new inventions and discoveries every day, and my Editor was especially interested in the more peculiar details of mankind’s advancement. So, when I heard about The Man Who Should Be Dead lying comatose without a heartbeat at University College Hospital, that was, well, it was right up my alley. I, um. I didn’t expect him to be quite so beautiful. _


	2. The Various Perils of Beautiful Men

Physically, it’s subtle. Jonathan doesn’t rear up out of his bed screaming. He doesn’t make a sound, he doesn’t open his eyes. But he does start breathing.  
  
Metaphysically, it’s like a solar flare goes off half a foot away from Martin’s knees, and he trips backward on instinct, eyes wide, dropping the piece of paper like he’s been burned. He stares at Jonathan, tries to adjust to the power pouring off him in waves, tries not to let it consume him. Martin’s mouth is dry and his hands are shaking and he glances back at the windows: they’re two floors above the ground and he’s wondering whether it’ll be possible to get out without having to go past Jonathan’s bed. He’s not sure he’ll be able to maintain his concentration whilst climbing out of a window, but better to draw the attention of ordinary people than - well, than confront whatever it is that Jonathan Sims has become.  
  
Of course, it’s at this moment that Jonathan notices him. He speaks as softly and as painfully as one would expect after six months of hovering on the threshold of death. He doesn’t sound like a monster.  
  
“Wh-who are you?”  
  
The ward isn’t huge, and Martin hadn’t moved far from Jonathan’s bedside. He’s close enough to see that, yes, he does have lovely eyes: a deep dark brown that’s almost gold when it catches the light of the setting sun. Even fresh out of whatever slumber he’d been trapped in, dressed in ill fitting hospital clothes and weary, he’s still beautiful.  
  
So Martin blushes when he replies, raising his chin, “My name’s Martin Blackwood. I’m a reporter for The Observer.” And then, because he thinks Jonathan probably needs to hear it, he adds, “I’m not, um, here to hurt you or anything. You’re safe.”  
  
Jonathan’s expression is almost unreadable, though Martin suspects he doesn’t believe him. That’s reasonable, he wouldn’t either. Instead Jonathan turns away from him, looking curiously at the ward, before trying to sit up. He flinches, and Martin finds himself rushing forward before he can stop himself.  
  
The power surrounding Jonathan hasn’t stopped, exactly, but after the moment of waking it’s dimmed to something that’s vaguely tolerable, if intimidating. Martin wonders which entity it belongs to, and files away the question to be dealt with later. He’s fairly certain Jonathan has no idea what he’s doing: and he’s not sure whether that’s frightening or reassuring.  
  
Instead of following that train of thought, Martin gently puts his hands on Jonathan’s shoulders, still without really thinking about it, and tries to push him back onto the bed. “You really shouldn’t do that.”  
  
As soon as Martin touches him, Jonathan flinches violently away, and then winces, hissing breath through his teeth. Martin jumps back, already halfway through his third apology, “ - Sorry, sorry it’s just that your muscles will have atrophied and you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep trying to move around and -,”  
  
About sixty seconds into this ramble Jonathan holds up a hand and Martin stops, awkwardly. Jonathan’s brow is damp with sweat, and his hair is limp and pressed flat to his head. He slumps back into the bed as his arm gives out from under him, and scowls at the ceiling for a moment before taking a deep breath. Then he looks down his nose at Martin. “Where am I?”  
  
Martin brightens. This, he can answer. “University College Hospital.”  
  
Jonathan nods. “How long have I - ,” He breaks off, coughing, and Martin fetches him a glass of water without thinking. When Jonathan takes it, their fingers touch. Jonathan’s hand is cool, and soft, and it burns a little where he touches him. Martin tries very hard not to think about it as he pulls away. Jonathan drinks the water, stiffly, and tries again. “How long have I been here?”  
  
Martin checks his notes. “About six months.”  
  
If this surprises Jonathan, he says nothing of it. Instead he continues, dark eyes narrowed, “And why would a reporter be interested in a man in a coma?”  
  
“Oh! You were dead.” Martin doesn’t really think about his answer. He thinks perhaps he should have as he watches the colour drain from Jonathan’s face.  
  
“I - what?” His voice is hoarse, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s from the coma or from the shock.  
  
“Well, I mean, you were maybe dead? Ms Barker said you were alive. The professors here were pretty sure you weren’t. Your heart wasn’t beating and you weren’t breathing, but your eyelids were moving. You were, well, a medical curiosity. It’s why you’re in here by yourself.” Martin gestures to the cold, grey and white stone expanse of the little ward. It spins around them like a miniaturised arctic waste, a luxury of space in the otherwise overcrowded hospital.  
  
“And this is news?” Jonathan makes no effort to hide his incredulity.  
  
Martin shrugs. “It’s a slow weekend.”  
  
Jonathan huffs a soft, surprised little laugh. Martin beams. Their eyes meet for a second: and Martin feels as if Jonathan can see right into his soul. Or whatever’s left of it.  
  
He turns to the door. “I should really get the nurse.” Martin tells himself he imagines the flicker of disappointment that passes across Jonathan’s face before he nods, gratefully.  
  
“Yes, of course.” He’s just woken up, but Jonathan already looks like he could spend another six months in bed.  
  
Martin turns to go, then stops. He considers telling Jonathan about the piece of paper, and Antonio Blake or Oliver Banks or whatever his name was. Then he remembers the power rippling around Jonathan the way death clings to a predator, and he decides against it. But he doesn’t want to leave Jonathan with nothing. So he steps back to the bed and holds out his hand. Jonathan looks surprised, and doesn’t move to take it, but Martin persists. “It was nice to meet you, Mr Sims.”  
  
Understanding dawns on Jonathan’s features, and he reaches out, the corners of his eyes tight and jaw tense, and takes Martin’s hand weakly in his own. Despite whatever pain he must be in, he smiles when he meets Martin’s eyes again: a weak, awkward smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Please, call me Jon.”  
  
“Jon it is.” Martin tries to ignore the way his face is burning, and the stupid half smile he can’t keep from his lips. It feels terribly forward, bordering on impropriety, to move so quickly into not only using first names but a nickname. He has no idea why Jon would offer him such an intimacy, and can only assume that it has more to do with the strangeness of the man in front of him than anything he might know or think about Martin himself. It’s not special. Martin blushes anyway.

They shake, and then Martin let’s go, still feeling the heat of Jon’s palm on his like a burn from a hot stove. He steps back, slipping his hand into his pocket as he does, and opens his mouth once before he closes it. Jonathan watches him expectantly. Martin gives him a quick, awkward nod, turns on his heel, and tells himself he isn’t fleeing as he leaves.  
  
Martin grabs the attention of the closest nurse, and three more follow her past him down the corridor to Jonathan - _ Jon’s _ ward, though whether it’s out of medical necessity or plain curiosity, Martin can’t tell. The little crowd grabs the attention of Georgie Barker, who’d been sitting in the corridor, drinking a cup of tea. Her eyes are red.  
  
As soon as the nurses start moving, though, she follows them - loudly ignoring any protests and barrelling through the crowd in a way that would make a rugby player proud. She bursts through the doors, and makes no effort to lower her voice. “Jon!”  
  
Just before Martin turns the corner, he catches her tackling Jon in a hug. As the doors swing open and shut while the nurses follow behind her, he sees Jon flail, and then wrap his arm around Georgie’s back, smiling wide and relieved and happy and full of affection. Jonathan Sims’ smile is as heartbreakingly beautiful as Martin suspected it would be. And it isn’t for him.  
  
So he turns the corner, and pulls ice and fog around him like a shield, and tries very hard not to think about how long it’s been since anyone embraced him like that. Martin’s not entirely sure that anyone ever has.  
  


* * *

  
When Martin gets back to the office, the only person there is Gerry Keay. This is often the case, and Martin tries not to feel unreasonably guilty about it. If he is… having an effect that clears the office, then he does at least try to minimise the disruption by spending the majority of his working hours on field work like the Sims case. It was one thing to unintentionally clear a relatively small department in a newspaper office: and another entirely to cause the evacuation of a city, let alone a city like London. The latter was far beyond Martin’s capabilities, intentional or otherwise. So Martin spent his days outside, surrounded by people but nonetheless entirely alone. He rather liked it that way.  
  
He also likes Gerry, though, and when he sets down his splitting leather satchel with a sigh he altogether neglects to repress, Gerry has already got to his feet, steaming mug in hand. Martin doesn’t try to hide his smile, and ignores the ache in his chest when he does so as he takes the mug.  
  
“Still warm. Did you know I was coming?” Martin certainly hadn’t - but he doesn’t think Gerry’s ever got it wrong.  
  
Gerry shrugs, and Martin tries not to stare with too much concern at the deep purple bags under his eyes. He taps his forehead and shrugs. “Something like that. Get anything good?”  
  
Martin bites the inside of his cheek, and Gerry raises his eyebrows. “That interesting? This I have to hear.”  
  
He turns, folding his arms over his crumpled shirt. His sleeves are rolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his jacket has long since been abandoned on his chair. Gerry’s state of dress usually hovers somewhere between gothic and debauched, but he only really toys with the more gothic apparel when he’s in a good mood, and he hasn’t been in a great one for a few months now. Martin resists the irrational desire to insist that Gerry let him iron his shirts if he refuses to do it himself.  
  
Instead he tries to figure out how to tell Gerry what it felt like to meet Jonathan Sims. The word ‘ineffable’ springs to mind, and Martin huffs a soft, frustrated laugh, still trying to decide on where to start.  
  
Gerry’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “Are you in love Martin?”  
  
The question burns. Martin doesn’t think there’s any supernatural aspect to it - no more than the usual, anyway. But the pain is enough that he doesn’t stop himself from hissing in a quick, surprised gasp as he instinctively presses a hand to his chest in a helpless effort to soothe a wound that isn’t there.  
  
Gerry frowns, straightening up to his not inconsiderable height (nearly on a par with Martin’s), and steps forward. Then he hesitates and purses his lips.

“I’m - sorry, are you alright?” Gerry’s tone is sharp and almost callous. The manner he takes to try and deal with any crisis is an icy balm to the ache eating its way through Martin’s rib cage.  
  
Martin nods, making an effort to pry his hand away from his chest and push it, shaking a little, through his hair. “Y-yeah I’m fine. Sorry. Weird reaction.” He laughs, and blushes with it, beginning to feel real embarrassment as his mind starts to tell him exactly how strange Gerry must have found his behaviour in response to what was an otherwise fairly harmless statement. “Must just be, uh, heartburn. Something I ate. Probably.”  
  
Gerry’s sharp, dark eyes narrow a little, just for a second. But then his features smooth, and he nods. One hand is still raised, hovering just over Martin’s upper arm. Gerry’s bare wrist is covered in goosebumps.  
  
“Of course. I...apologise. If I crossed any boundaries. That was inappropriate of me. I am your direct supervisor, and I should - I shouldn’t have asked. It was indecorous.” Gerry’s shoulders are stiff as he delivers his apology, and he doesn’t meet Martin’s eyes. He’s lowered his hand.  
  
So Martin reaches out and takes Gerry’s shoulder. It’s a little lower than his own, and much thinner - almost hard. Martin squeezes anyway, and waits until the tension loosens from Gerry’s frame. “Don’t be an idiot. I was just taken off guard.” Martin lowers his voice, feeling a little like the schoolboy he never really got to be. “He _ was _ handsome.”  
  
Gerry’s thin lips quirk, and he raises one eyebrow, reaching down to pick up his own half drunk mug of tea from where he’d set it on Martin’s desk. “I hope this won’t affect your writing of the article. Because your piece on Daniel Stoker took about three times as long to edit as it should have done due solely to superfluous adjectives.”  
  
Martin can feel the spots of pink on his cheeks, but he gives Gerry his defence without thinking. “He was very charming!”  
  
Gerry offers him the ghost of a smile. “I’m sure he was Martin. As sure as I am that you are not remotely impervious to the charms of handsome men, and that it does little for your skill as a journalist.”  
  
“Well, I promise to include only relevant adjectives in this one,” Martin replies, with only a touch of petulance, drinking his now lukewarm tea. “But I think the fact he’s beautiful is something that our readers would want to know! It makes it - more poetic.”  
  
“They can fill in the gaps. And you’re a journalist, not a poet.” Gerry says, smiling now, before moving over to his desk and pulling over a chair. He folds into it with a heavy sigh that sounds almost pained. Martin purses his lips, and Gerry waves him off before he says anything. “It’s fine. I only have a few things left to do tonight before the editor lets me go.”  
  
Martin frowns. “Is he paying you for these extra hours?”  
  
Gerry glances away, across the smooth surfaces of the empty office and into the windows, pitch black now that night has fallen. “After a fashion.”  
  
Martin’s frown turns into a scowl. “That doesn’t sound like a yes.”  
  
Gerry huffs, and sits forward, keeping both hands around his mug and rubbing his thumb over the handle. “It’s enough to keep me going. Besides, you should watch how you speak about your superiors.” He glances up again, at the flaking green plaster. “The walls have eyes.”  
  
A shudder crawls down Martin’s spine. He makes a conscious effort to ignore it, and after drinking another sip of his sweet, milky tea, he clears his throat. “Well, he woke up.”  
  
Gerry’s feet hit the floor with an arrhythmic thump. “He did what?”  
  
Martin grins a little. “He woke up. Which is an answer to the dead or not dead question, I think. And it makes a better story: man wakes from coma after six months without a heartbeat.”  
  
“The religious lot will have a field day,” Gerry murmurs, frowning at the hardwood floor.  
  
Martin snorts. “I don’t think Jon could be anyone’s version of a messiah.”  
  
“Jon, is it?” Gerry’s always been a little too quick for Martin to keep up, and he flushes now, hiding his face by taking another drink of tea. Gerry lets him deal with his embarrassment for a moment before continuing. “What was he like?”  
  
Martin tilts his head back, looking up at the white plaster ceiling and the yellow pool of illumination cast on it by their one electric light. It hums quietly in the empty office. “I’m not sure. It was hard to get much of a read on him - obviously the nurses wanted to see him after he woke up. And Ms Barker.”  
  
“You met her?” Gerry’s voice is loud in the empty office.  
  
Martin nods, thinking of Jonathan Sims and the threads of silver in his hair. “Yeah, seemed like she’d been visiting pretty much every day.”  
  
“Did you get an interview with her?” Gerry asks the question like it’s obvious. Martin realises that it probably should have been, in retrospect, and he blushes. “Martin. Tell me you at least got a statement from Sims himself.”  
  
Martin wonders, without much hope, whether he could claim that anything Jon had said to him was any kind of statement. The silence stretches, and Gerry pinches the bridge of his nose, a few strands of his long dark hair slipping forward to frame his face.  
  
“Right. Do you have his age?”  
  
This, at least, Martin had prepared before his visit. “He’s 32.” The same age as him. Not that it mattered.  
  
“Occupation?”  
  
Another blank space. It had been something Martin had planned to ask Ms Barker, as it happened. But she’d seemed so sad, and then when Jon had woken up it just didn’t feel like the right time, and then there was the whole thing with Oliver or Antonio or whoever he was - but that didn’t feel like something he should be putting in the paper.  
  
Gerry lets out a long, exasperated sigh and gets to his feet. “Alright. Well, you’ll have to do a follow up. You don’t have enough for the article at present. But don’t let this interfere too much with your routine. We’re in the business of news, Martin, not speculative fiction.”  
  
Martin thinks about Jon waking up - about the power that had erupted from him, invisible and omnipresent. He nods, and tugs at his ponytail. “Right. Yes. Of course.” He moves to sit down at his desk, pulling his typewriter a little closer to the centre.  
  
“Not now, Martin. Go home, it’s late.” Gerry’s voice bounces off the walls of the office. Martin frowns, glancing up at the clock. It is late, but...

  
“Aren’t you going home as well?”  
  
Gerry has already sat back down at his desk and put his glasses on to squint at the first letter on a top of a sturdy pile. He waves him off. “Not yet.”  
  
“Gerry.”  
  
“It’s fine Martin. Worry about yourself - and that story. I want it finished by Friday at the latest. No matter how handsome he is.” Gerry says the last part with a smile, and Martin returns it, picking up his bag and his coat.  
  
As he gets to the door, he turns back. Gerry sits alone in a sea of crowded desks, hunched over his work, long dark hair trailing down his back like spilled ink. He looks incredibly small, in the cavern of their office, with its high ceilings and chipped plaster. A part of Martin he doesn’t like very much reaches hungrily for the loneliness spreading out around Gerry to fill the room in his absence. With some effort, Martin pulls it back.  
  
He’s not sure if he imagines the way Gerry’s shoulders relax slightly.  
  
He doesn’t let himself think on it too much as he leaves - stepping out into the cold dark night and making his way home through the half-crowded streets of London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But then you woke up, and, I mean. That shouldn’t have been possible, obviously. And there was this, this power coming off you in waves. And you spoke to me. And you weren’t scared. I mean, I was this total stranger and, well...but you laughed, and you shook my hand, and you told me to call you Jon. I think perhaps I was lost even then. _


	3. An Improbable Occupation

It takes two days of Martin following a trail of disgruntled and bewildered medical staff, plus one very friendly lady named Annabelle, to make his way to the offices of an establishment which calls itself Ghost Hunt UK. It’s strange, as he walks the streets of London, he feels almost as if some invisible thread is pulling him in the right direction: tugging his feet round corners and past dead ends. Martin half fancies himself as Ariadne, and his fingers swing lightly in the air, searching for some invisible rope that will guide him to that for which he’s been searching.

After such an enchanted journey, his arrival is something of a disappointment.  
  


Martin gazes skeptically up at the fairly average looking block of offices. It’s a red brick affair, soot stained, in an average part of town: not disreputable, by any means - but certainly the less prosperous half of the merchants’ quarter. The building blends in perfectly with its surroundings: private investigators’ offices, small time accountancy and legal firms, and other such moderately successful small businesses. 

This, apparently, is where Jonathan Sims is employed. It is also, apparently, where he had insisted on returning less than a day after waking from his coma - which, medical miracle or not, was quite some distance from what his doctors would presumably have called advisable behaviour. 

The only thing that really picks the place out as somewhat unusual is the sign on the door: picked out in neat enough letters against polished brass, which proclaims the name of the business to any passerby who cares to look twice. 

_ Ghost Hunt UK _. What kind of name is that anyway? Checking up and down the street, Martin sighs and crosses the pavement, walking down the little path in the building’s front garden and raising one hand to knock on the door. He hopes that no one notices him doing so. The sounds of the street, mostly pedestrians and a horse or two from the few cabbies who bothered to venture into North-West London, all but swallow the noise. 

After a few minutes, Martin lifts his fist to knock again, chewing on his lip. The door swings open under his raised hand, and he finds himself face to face with Jonathan Sims - who is looking much healthier and indeed more upright than anyone who has spent six months in a coma has any right to be. Jon looks surprised for all of ten seconds before he blinks. “Mr Blackwood. Another slow news day, is it?”

Martin laughs, despite himself, and tries not to focus too quickly on the way the corner of Jon’s mouth quirks upward for a moment before he straightens it. “Oh, um, yeah. Follow up on the last story, actually.” 

“I had noticed that news of my miraculous awakening had yet to make it to the papers.” Jon’s voice drips contempt over the word miraculous, which Martin thinks is rather an answer in itself for what he thinks of the religious lobby. 

He gestures behind Jon to the cramped, dark hallway he can see just behind him. “I just wanted to go over a few details, make sure I’ve got it all straight in my head. Do you mind if I come in?”

Jon hesitates. But it’s at this moment that a short, slender woman appears behind him in the shadows. “Jon? Why are you keeping a client on the street?” The woman’s voice is coarse and loud. Jon scowls, not bothering to turn around and not moving out of the doorway.

“He’s not a client, he’s a reporter.” The words come out even more perfectly enunciated than usual - and Martin’s fairly sure they’re a sign of Jon’s irritation. 

The woman steps close enough that her head is peeking over Jon’s shoulder. Her pale skin looks almost sickly next to the rich brown of his, and her black hair is somewhat lank. She’s wearing a dress that doesn’t quite sit right over her broad shoulders - but the rest of her is thin in a way that suggests either malnourishment or poor eating habits. Her dark eyes are almost black. Everything about her is sharp and cut in bold strokes, and Martin has very little doubt that she could challenge him to a fist fight and win. She narrows her eyes at him, then glances at Jon, who is stiff and uncomfortable with her proximity. “Well, Georgie’s always saying we need better publicity. What’s the problem?” 

“He’s not here to talk about our investigations. He wants to interview me about my coma.” Jon grinds out the words surprisingly clearly considering the tension in his jaw. Martin gives the woman an embarrassed little wave and a hopeful smile. 

“Hi! My name’s Martin Blackwood, I work for The Observer. It’s nice to meet you, um?”

The woman lifts her chin. “Melanie King. Are you going to mention us in your report?” 

She gestures with one calloused hand to the narrow hall and the doorway. Martin cannot help but notice the bruising on her knuckles, and finds himself wondering once again exactly what kind of operation they’re running here. Jon has stepped sideways by now, and Melanie has squeezed forwards, so they’re both jammed into the doorway. Martin imagines that he would be feeling the cold of a crisp morning at this point if he were anyone other than who he was. 

He shrugs his shoulders and makes an exaggerated shivering noise anyway, just in case. Jon catches it, and heaves a sigh. “Alright, come inside. The last thing we need is for you to catch your death on our doorstep. The litigation alone would bankrupt us.” 

He steps back, walking down the poorly lit corridor and into the dark. On the doorstep, Martin hesitates. Melanie stands with her arms folded, leaning against the doorframe and glaring at him. Martin wonders whether she’d be treating him differently if he was one of their clients, whatever that meant. He moves forward, and Melanie doesn’t shift. Somewhat awkwardly, Martin clears his throat. He’s not a small man, and he’ll have to squeeze past Melanie to get inside otherwise. 

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Go on then.” 

Martin swallows his discomfort and nods. It’s not the worst thing he’s had to do for a story, and he steps sideways, squeezing past Melanie and trying to keep himself as small as possible as he ducks into the hall. Melanie shuts the door behind him with a creak and a rattle, and he can feel her eyes on the back of his neck as he starts walking towards the open door at the end of the hall and the bright pool of illumination it offers. 

Jon reappears in the doorway just before Martin reaches it, backlit by the daylight coming into the room like something not quite of this world or this place, and standing in stark contrast to the creeping smell of mildew and lamp oil that fills the corridor. He raises a hand. “Would you like some tea?” 

Martin nods, emphatically. “Please.” 

Jon makes a soft sound of acknowledgment and moves away. Martin steps into the head, and only, office of Ghost Hunt UK, with Melanie close enough behind him that he’s not sure he’s imagining her breath on the back of his neck. His skin prickles. Martin quickly steps to the side, pressing his back to the wall, and Melanie saunters past him to a cluttered desk. Martin tries not to be too obvious about his relief.

The office is, on balance, far more average than Martin had expected it to be. There are five desks, two of which are subtly dusted with signs of disuse: cobwebs and untouched stacks of paperwork - and on one a long abandoned mug. Three, one of which Melanie is now sitting at, seem far better cared for: still covered in stacks and stacks of paper, but more organised and clearly set up for daily use. At the back of the office are a large set of windows framed by white lace curtains that look out over the wall of the alley behind the building and into the park beyond it, and then at the city beyond that, ringing the green space like a red brick barracks, erratically staining the sky with soot. 

It’s not a huge space, but it’s not tiny either, and there’s a small kitchen that adjoins the room in which Jon is bustling. In the office proper, Melanie pokes at the fire, and Martin stifles his discomfort as he adjusts to the warmth of the room. The sounds of the street are muffled here and the windows are shut, so beyond the clink of Jon fussing with the teapot and the crackle of the fire, it’s almost peaceful. 

Martin’s not sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. 

Jon returns, and gestures for Martin to sit on a cracked red leather chair, which is set up in a position vaguely adjacent to one of the abandoned desks, as much as the small space allows. Martin sits, gingerly, not entirely sure he trusts the aging piece of furniture to take his weight, and Jon presses a mug of milky tea into his hand. “You’ll have to forgive the lack of ceremony, we don’t have much room for such things here.” Martin isn’t sure whether Jon means that they lack space, money or time, but he doesn’t sound particularly apologetic.

Hesitantly, Martin takes a sip of his tea, already weighing up whether it will be worth asking for a pot of sugar or if he’d prefer to just drink the stuff and not cause any further bother. So he’s surprised when the tea is perfect: perfectly sugared, perfectly brewed, and exactly how he likes it. Martin sets the mug down on a narrow section of the desk in front of him that is covered in neither paperwork nor too much dust, and wonders whether it’s worth remarking on. Jon’s tea, he can see, is black, so it can’t just be that Jon made him what he himself liked, which would be surprising but explicable. Before Martin can raise it, however, Jon sits down at his desk, moving aside a thick envelope with beautiful looping handwriting on the front. 

“So, what do you need to know?”

“And are you going to mention us? In a positive light, mind.” Melanie doesn’t exactly make it a verbal threat, but there’s something in her tone that suggests that if Martin doesn’t mention them in a positive light then he’ll be seeing her again in very different circumstances. Martin shifts uncomfortably and Jon huffs, waving one of his slender hands.

“Ignore her. What do you need to know?” 

Martin doesn’t really think before he answers, because he’s just processed the other thing that’s been bothering him. The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “I’m sorry but, should you really be at work? I mean. You woke up out of a coma two days ago. Shouldn’t you...rest?” 

Jon’s mouth twists. “No Mr Blackwood, I have had enough rest to last me a lifetime.” He looks up, and his eyes are dark, and there’s something in them that Martin thinks he recognises. “Believe me when I say that the last thing I need or want is any more sleep.”

“Bad dreams?” Martin can’t help it, not really. Despite his own state of affairs, he’s always prided himself on being a kind person. And, well, whilst Martin is well aware of the irony their current location affords the sentiment, Jon looks haunted. At Martin’s question he startles - just a little - a quick movement of his hands before he squints at him across his crowded desk. 

“How do you know that?” Jon’s voice is low and cold and Martin’s not really sure what he did wrong, so he rubs the back of his neck and shrugs - glancing at Melanie, who is predictably enough of very little help, just sitting and staring at the two of them across the narrow space.

“Is that not normally the reason that people have trouble sleeping? I mean I guess I just, I get nightmares too, and I understand wanting to avoid sleep for that, um, that reason.” Martin lets his voice peter off and tries not to look too embarrassed, though he wrings his hands in his lap where he’s fairly sure neither Melanie nor Jon can see them. He hadn’t really planned to admit his own trouble sleeping, but the words had fallen from his mouth before he’d had the wits to stop them.

Jon relaxes, sitting back into his own wooden chair. It creaks as he does so. He passes a hand over his face, and Martin can’t help but notice that it’s shaking a little. “Right, right, of course.”

Martin purses his lips. “Are you alright? You seem a little…” He hesitates.

“Paranoid?” Melanie provides, and Jon glares at her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be getting on with something?” 

“Touchy, too.” Melanie mutters, but she dips her pen in an open ink pot and gets back to the document in front of her. The scratch of her writing layers itself over the sound of the fire. Martin drinks his tea. 

“I apologise for my colleague Mr Blackwood, and for myself. The adjustment period is. Well. As I’m sure you can imagine.”

Martin can’t, really. He isn’t sure many people know what it’s like to wake up out of a coma after six months and go back to work two days later. But he gets the impression that Jon isn’t going to talk about what it feels like, so he lets it slide and nods. “Of course. Well, um, if you don’t mind, can we get started?” 

Jon gestures for him to continue, and Martin gets out his notebook and pen. “Great. So, um, how long have you been working here?” 

Jon tilts his head back, looking up at the ceiling whilst he thinks and exposing the long line of his throat. Martin very carefully doesn't stare: instead looking outside at the park under the grey light of what’s already becoming an overcast day. “About seven years, I think?”

Martin nods, noting it down. “And have you been working with Ms Barker and Ms King for all of that time?” 

“Yes. We - we’ve had other staff, but they’re no longer with us.”

“Right. And what is it exactly that you do here?” 

The doorbell rings. It’s loud - a heavy brass clattering thing over the doorway of the office and just above Martin’s head that makes him jump - scribbling a line across the page as he does so. Melanie is already on her feet. “I’ll get it.” 

Jon nods, though he makes no effort to hide his curiosity, glancing past Martin and down the hall. There’s the sound of Melanie’s voice, and another - male voice Martin thinks. He almost thinks he recognises it, except that that really would be a coincidence too far, and he’s just far away enough from the conversation that he can’t really tell. The door shuts, and the rattle echoes. 

After a few moments, Melanie is back. “You’ve got another one.” She throws a heavy envelope at Jon, who catches it and winces when he does. Martin wonders exactly how ready he is to be back at work, despite all appearances. But then he’s distracted by the fact that this envelope has the same beautiful looping handwriting as the other on Jon’s desk. Martin glances across the piles of papers, and realises that a previously innocuous stack of envelopes now seem suspiciously uniform. There must be at least a dozen of them, and Jon is opening this one with a letter opener and an almost feverish intensity. 

Jon pulls out a sheaf of expensive looking paper and immediately starts to read it, utterly ignoring Martin and Melanie, who heads back to her desk and recommences her work - though she occasionally glances up at Jon as if she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Martin is accustomed enough to being ignored, and he lets the fog creep invisibly around him, fading into the powder blue wallpaper as Jon continues to read. It’s only when Jon’s gaze is halfway down the page that Martin starts to feel it. It’s subtle at first, like the distant rumble of a coming storm. But it grows: a prickling, uneasy feeling. The heavy weight of being watched by something impossibly immense, pressed down upon like an insect under a looking glass. Martin tries to swallow and feels as though he can’t, and wraps more fog around himself to help lighten the pressure, pushing himself to the edge of being visible to the human eye but not quite past it. In his experience disappearing abruptly in people’s offices tends to be something they remembered, even if they didn’t notice it when it was happening.

Of course, remaining visible to the human eye means no chance of escaping the inhuman one, and Martin grips the arms of his chair until the leather creaks and his bones hurt as he tries to endure the excruciating sensation of examination. He notices that Melanie, too, has her shoulders hunched and has stopped writing: the tendons of her forearms standing rigid with tension. 

Jon’s lips are moving, but he’s not making a sound. He seems almost entranced, and Martin is mostly certain that he has no idea what he’s doing. They wait for Jon to finish and it feels like a little eternity in the office, one in which the fire gets low and the sun moves across the sky and Martin just can’t move for the weight of the world looking over his shoulder. 

But then finally, finally, Jon turns the last page and and sets down the pile, tension snapping out of his body like a puppet with its strings cut. Jon gasps, and Martin heaves his own breath too. Melanie is more subtle about it, but when she stands she does so shakily before marching out of the office and down the hall - slamming the door behind her as she goes. 

Jon watches her go distantly, but he still seems somewhat dazed. Martin can see now a faint sweat clinging to Jon’s temples, the way his hands are shaking violently, the way his shoulders are hunched and curled like a child’s gripped by some terrible fear. 

Martin clears his throat, and it sounds terribly loud in the quiet of the office. “Are - are you alright?” 

Jon blinks, and when he turns his gaze to Martin his pupils are far too wide. But then he blinks, and a little of the warmth of his irises returns, and Martin feels the pressure lift as it does so. “I - I need to go.”

Martin frowns. Jon doesn’t look in any state to be going anywhere, and his suspicions are confirmed when it takes Jon two shaking attempts to pick up his coat. “Are you sure? You don’t seem quite well.” 

Jon is already pulling on his coat and Martin, fighting a rising sense of alarm, gets to his feet. Jon isn’t looking at him. “Yes. I apologise Mr Blackwood, but we will have to finish this at some other time. I’m afraid something has come up which is really rather urgent.” He glances up, distracted suddenly, as if he’d heard someone at the door, and looks almost sheepish when he adds, while checking his pockets. “Also, Georgie will be here soon, and I really should be gone by then.” 

“She doesn’t approve of your being back at work.” It’s not really a question, and Martin agrees with her. Jon gives a quick nod and starts heading down the hall. Martin follows him. “Jon, wait! Where are you going?” 

Martin’s thinking a lot of things. One of them is that there are certainly people and objects in this world capable of compelling individuals to march into dangerous situations. Indeed, with enough motivation, Martin is such a creature. And he doesn’t trust whoever is behind the beautiful looping handwriting on those envelopes. 

“It’s really none of your concern Mr Blackwood. Good day.” Jon steps outside with no more effort at a dismissal, and shuts the door behind him. For a moment, Martin stares at the shivering glass and wood frame. He thinks about it. It really isn’t his concern. In point of fact, all of this has been getting dangerously close to the opposite of what he should be doing. There’s no reason for him to trail some strange beautiful man around London like a lost puppy, and if he’s learned anything about Jonathan Sims over the last 72 hours it’s that the man is surrounded by supernatural forces he can neither understand nor contain. In a word, he’s dangerous. This is exactly the kind of thing that Martin has been trying to avoid. He should just let him go. 

He should really just let him go. 

Martin breathes a quick string of curses in Polish, and steps out of the door, carefully shutting it behind him. The great thing about being tall on a half empty street is that it’s easy to spot people at a distance, and Jon hasn’t made it too far, though Melanie is nowhere to be seen. 

It doesn’t take Martin long to catch up with Jon, who is marching with purpose and has not yet bothered to button his coat. He looks both surprised and harassed when Martin matches pace with him. “Do you really have nothing better to do with your day, Mr Blackwood, than follow me around?” 

“I do, actually - but I’m also on a deadline. Do you mind if we walk and talk?” Martin’s an agreeable man, but he knows how to ask a question in a way that suggests he won’t take no for an answer. 

Jon huffs, turning left and nearly colliding with a nanny and her pram. Martin apologises to the woman when it becomes clear that Jon has no intention of doing so. The streets of London smell like horse shit and smoke, metal and filth. In this part of town, there’s more smoke than anything, and Martin’s eyes sting a little with the acrid burn of it as they walk. “Are we going far?”

He’s not sure how long Jon plans to keep up this pace, but he is certain that it’s far more brisk than a man who was really quite recently essentially clinically dead should be moving. 

“It’s about a mile. We’re making a house call, if you must know.” 

“Is that a common occurrence in your line of work?” Martin half wishes he could be making notes as they go, but as it is he’ll have to trust his memory. He can make do. 

Jon shrugs, waiting for a horse and cart to pass before he crosses the road, and giving Martin a chance to catch his breath. “Not really. Most of the time people come to us after a paranormal incident has occurred. Sometimes we follow up on it, but there’s not normally much point. My suspicion is that things such as these are far more interested in the people they torment than the locations in which the tormenting occurs.” 

The cart passes, and they step off the high curb and into the road, briskly crossing the street. A dog barks at them, and Jon pulls his coat a little closer, finally bothering to button it as a chill wind picks up and roars down the pavement. “But this time you think the paranormal incident is tied to the place?” Martin asks, struggling to follow Jon’s logic and ignore the desire to know exactly how much Jon is holding back. In the back of his head, it nags at him almost like a string, begging to be pulled.

They start walking up an incline, and Jon glances up at a flock of birds winging their way above the chimneys against the light grey sky, before glancing back down again at the street. It’s a little emptier than it should be, but not entirely empty, and Martin hopes that Jon doesn’t let himself think about it too much. The nagging at the back of his head eases.

“No, not exactly. I mean it’s possible: Fielding’s Orphanage has been the epicentre of several paranormal events. If there were a location these entities favoured then, well, I’m not a betting man - but I’d bet it was there.”

“So why are we going there now? What’s so urgent about it?” Martin has a sinking feeling he knows the answer to this question. 

When Jon bothers to look at him, his expression is almost exhilarated. “I told you that we normally have clients telling us about paranormal incidents that have happened to them in the past?” 

“Yes.” Martin really doesn’t like where this is going.

“Well. Let’s just say this time we have a chance to catch one _ in media res _.” Jon starts walking even faster, and Martin struggles to keep up, feeling a sense of growing dread as he watches Jon’s dark figure weaving his way through the few pedestrians who’ve chosen to brave the open street on such a miserable day. 

Martin isn’t really talking to Jon when he replies, a little hopelessly, to the open air. “I can’t help but feel that’s not a very good idea.”

He follows anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I found out about Ghost Hunt UK, and the journalist in me couldn’t quite believe it. I think I called the piece, ‘Paranormal Activity? Ghost Hunter Lives Again!’ I, ah, didn’t show you that. I thought you might be irritated. I met Melanie King, she carried violence with her like perfume. And then you read a statement: I knew it wasn’t - I knew there was power in it. I didn’t know what. I followed you anyway._


	4. The House on Hill Top Road

The building at 105 Hill Top Road that used to be Fielding’s Home for Wayward Boys is exactly as eerie as Martin hoped it wouldn’t be. The stone is grey and bleak and the building looms over the rest of the street, tall and haphazard next to its more orderly neighbours. In front of it stands a tree. That tree is deadly. 

Martin isn’t sure how or why he knows this, but he’s quite certain that being too close to the thing is poison in and of itself, and he carefully positions himself between Jon and the tree’s side of the path that leads up to the house. If Jon notices, he says nothing, instead too focused on the boarded up front door of the house. His hands are tucked deep into his pockets. Martin wonders whether they’re shaking again. 

The wind tugs at the waves of Jon’s hair, making it ripple like the sea. Jon shivers and pulls his coat a little tighter around himself. Martin purses his lips.

“Listen, Jon, I know it’s not my place - but are you sure that you should be doing…” Martin searches for what exactly it is that they’re doing and comes up short. Jon isn’t looking at him. “Are you sure you should be out and about like this? Why don’t we head back? You could send someone else here instead. I mean. I have a job to do, but I can come down once I’ve finished work.” The tree behind him is like the prickling of too-long nails scraping down the skin of his neck. Martin swallows. “I really don’t think we should be here. It’s not safe.”

Finally, Jon looks at him. His eyes catch gold in the weak sunlight. “What makes you say that?” 

Martin shrugs and tries to ignore the way his skin crawls, tries to resist the urge to check over his shoulder to see if the tree is somehow closer than it was before, tries to dismiss the impossible notion that its branches are reaching for his back like long, gnarled hands. “I don’t know. A feeling, I guess.”

Jon arches an eyebrow. “Not very journalistic of you, Mr Blackwood.”

“Coming from the paranormal investigator?” Martin snaps back, and is halfway to regretting his rudeness when Jon gives him half a grin. 

“I suppose that’s fair. I feel it too, incidentally.” 

Martin flushes despite himself. It’s far too quiet on this street, even for a street with Martin on it, and he can’t quite shake the feeling that they’ve somehow stepped into a space in which they are entirely alone. “Feel what too?” Martin sort of wants to melt into the ground when his voice breaks. But Jon looks confused, not affronted, so he’s guessing that they were on different enough trains of thought to save him from too much embarrassment.

Jon tilts his head towards the house: the boarded-up door at the top of a set of steep grey steps framed by two black iron railings. “Foreboding.” Jon’s voice is deep and rich and Martin thinks he might as well have walked out of a novel, looking like that, all sharp and dark and lean against the grey sky. 

But then one of the tree’s branches brushes his cheek, and Martin yelps and stumbles forward, nearly knocking Jon over as he trips on the path. Jon jumps too, and Martin is already offering apologies as he straightens: “ - stupid of me, I was just taken by surprise, I couldn’t, I just, I’m sorry you must think I’m such an idiot.” 

Jon’s hand squeezes Martin’s arm, just below his elbow, firm enough for him to feel it through the wool of his coat but not unkindly. He waits until Martin meets his eyes, and Martin tries to stifle the breathless panic bubbling up out of his chest that makes him want to keep talking. “There’s no need to apologise, Martin. Are you alright?” 

As sentiments go, it’s not exactly kind, but there’s something sincere in Jon’s expression and in his voice that brings Martin back down to earth again and grounds him faster than anything ever has. Martin lets out a shaking breath slowly, hoping it’s not too obvious, and nods, glancing to his left at the dark, dead tree looming over them. “Y-yes. Thank you. I just. I don’t think we should be standing so close to that tree.” 

Jon frowns, and glances past Martin at the tree as if he’s seeing it for the first time. He lets go of Martin’s arm, and Martin resists the urge to brush his sleeve where he’d been touching him, half compelled by the irrational sensation that Jon’s touch alone had set him on fire. But stifling the sense of burning is easy enough now that the panic's fading. Martin’s had enough practice with Gerry, though Gerry’s touch had never burned quite as hotly as this. Martin tries not to let himself think about it. 

Jon, in the meantime, apparently finishes his assessment and nods once, sharply. “Agreed. Well. We’re not going to get in through the front door anyway - not without drawing unwanted attention.” Though as he says it, Jon looks up and down the empty, quiet street, brow drawn in a set of wrinkles too deep for a man his age. 

Then he turns and strides past the front steps and begins to carefully pick his way through a bush of overgrown nettles. Once he’s through it, he turns and looks back at Martin with barely concealed impatience. “Are you coming?” 

Martin follows. “You’re not seriously planning to go inside this place, are you?” The space between the building and the wall ringing its front and back gardens is narrow and dark and turns the sky into little more than a distant grey river above them. It’s cold here, and it smells like filth - with piles of rubbish and at least one or two rats crawling over them where people have thrown everything from food wrappers to old shoes over the fence. 

Jon tilts his head back and stares up at a window, about seven feet off the ground. He turns to Martin. “Give me a leg up?” 

Marin stares at him. “You cannot be serious.”

Jon huffs. “Do we really have to go through this again? Yes, I appreciate your concern, no I will not be acting on it, and yes, I have every intention of going inside this house.”

“You just woke up from a coma. A_ coma _, Mr Sims. You should be in bed, or at the very least sitting down. Not on some street in God knows where trying to break into an orphanage.” Martin doesn’t really remember the last time he got this upset. Probably an argument with his mother. It hurts, though, and his throat burns when he raises his voice. “Tell me you know how ridiculous this is and that you’re not some delusional idiot bent on self-destruction.” 

Jon’s shoulders, which had been drawn and tense, lower a little, and he glances away from Martin - at the dark grey bricks of the house that are almost black in the shadows. Jon’s smile is bright and bitter in the dark. “Well, I can’t promise you that I’m not the latter. But I assure you that I am in full possession of my senses, Mr Blackwood. I am well aware that I should not be as well as I am, but I am, and there is not apparently a doctor in London that can explain it. I’d rather not question this second chance, if that is what it is. And I cannot sit inside and do nothing. It will drive me mad.” There’s a grim certainty to Jon’s last words, and his fingers curl at his sides. “I have reason to believe that there is something dangerous inside this house. And since there do not seem to be any _other_ delusional idiots intent enough on self-destruction in this city to be of any help, I feel it is beholden upon me to do something about it. Before anyone else gets hurt.” Jon hesitates, and looks up from his scuffed shoes to meet Martin’s eyes. “So. Will you help me, Mr - will you help me, Martin?” 

This man is going to be the death of him. 

Martin sighs, a long, weary, loud, performative affair, and beckons Jon closer. Jon chuckles as he does, and Martin crouches, lacing his fingers together. “Alright. Ready?” 

“Ready.” Jon steps into Martin’s hands, and Martin lifts him and tries not to think about how light he is. Instead he watches, holding steady as Jon fusses with something in his pocket and begins to rattle at the window frame. Jon’s trousers are pressed against the side of Martin’s face, and occasionally he steadies himself by pressing his hand into Martin’s hair. It’s awkward and childish and Martin finds himself flushing anyway. After a few more minutes, in which Martin is starting to feel the spread of heat blooming in his chest again, Jon makes a soft sound of triumph - and it’s so boyish and ridiculous that Martin nearly laughs. 

But then the window slides open with a whispering scrape, and dread creeps down Martin’s spine like an insect. Before he can do anything else, Jon’s weight moves away from him as he pushes himself up on the windowsill and tumbles inside. There’s a thump, and then Jon cries out, and Martin isn’t really thinking as he grabs onto the window ledge and heaves himself inside too, squeezing through the too-narrow space between the ledge and the window frame that Jon has left for him.

The interior of the orphanage is dark, and cold, and covered in spiderwebs. Jon is frantically trying to brush himself clean of them without much success, and his dark hair is grey with dust, presumably from where he tumbled inside. Martin grabs him before he can lose himself any further to panic, and briskly gets rid of the worst of it, hesitating at Jon’s head. “May I?” 

Jon’s eyes are squeezed shut and his lips are pursed like a child's. He nods, and Martin briskly brushes him clean and tries not to let his touch linger any longer than it has to. “Alright. I think that's the worst of it.” 

Jon uncurls a little and opens his eyes, mouth set firmly downward. “Why did it have to be spiders?”

Martin’s not entirely sure the question is directed at him, but he answers anyway - looking around the room and realising that what he’d previously thought were dust sheets or lace curtains are in fact layers and layers of web. “It’s...certainly unusual. I’d expect one or two, but this borders on the unnatural.” 

“Borders on it?” Jon’s voice is high and almost hysterical. “Martin, tell me, when was the last time you saw an ordinary spider do this?” He gestures expansively to the room, and then flinches when his fingers brush a hanging web, brushing them quickly against his already filthy trousers. 

Martin tilts his head, distracted by the sense of something heavy and dark and dangerous and different to the tree lurking somewhere just out of sight. “I mean, they’ve been finding all sorts of exotic species in the Amazon rainforest and bringing them back. Could be one of them got out? Or,” he hesitates, taking in the room, which may once have been a parlour and now looks like nothing so much as a mausoleum, “or a lot of them?” 

Jon huffs something under his breath that sounds like, “unbelievable”, and Martin resists the urge to point out the irony of his disparagement in favour of accepting the icy balm of Jon’s exasperation. It does something to soothe the heat that has been itching over his skin like a rash the longer he spends with the man. 

Jon hesitates and then marches forward, stepping over as much of the web as he can. Martin thinks it’s probably best not to point out the webs clinging to his shoes like soft grey clumps of mud. “Come on. We need to see the basement.” 

Martin doesn’t need the stab of dread that rises in him to know that that’s a bad idea, but he follows Jon out onto the staircase anyway. “Do we really? Do we need to see it, Jon?”

They both step out of the room they’d broken into and onto the landing. What was once presumably a modest enough townhouse now looks as if it’s been drowned in grey snow - the balustrade is veiled with so many spiderwebs it’s hard to tell what colour the wood beneath used to be. Jon shudders, and draws a handkerchief from his pocket to press to his mouth. He nods at Martin, and his voice is muffled when he speaks. “You should do the same.”

Martin doesn’t bother to tell him why that’s not necessary. Instead he withdraws his own handkerchief and presses it to his mouth, breathing in the smell of cotton. It’s an improvement on the stench of dust and decay that lingers in this house like a stain on the air. 

Carefully, Jon starts to make his way down the stairs. The wood creaks as he goes, but the spiderwebs muffle the sound of his footsteps. It’s like walking on clouds: the webs give and sink under their feet. The house is oppressively quiet, and Martin finds himself straining to hear any sound other than Jon’s laboured breathing. Martin doubts it’s due to the exertion. 

They get to the ground floor landing, and Jon pauses, staring at the back of the boarded-up front door before turning and continuing on, towards a door in the side of the staircase. Unlike every other doorway in the house, the threshold of this one is clean, revealing dark wood. Indeed, the door itself is spotless: as if someone had been here recently and only bothered with this one spot. Martin tries to swallow his discomfort as Jon crouches in front of the door, running his fingers along the floor by the base. Martin resists the urge to throw him out of the way, and tries to ignore visions of something shooting out from beneath the doorway and taking Jon’s fingers back with it. 

Jon stares at his own hands, clean, and then stands, feeling in his pocket for the lockpicking kit he’d used earlier. It only takes him a moment to realise that this lock is jammed full of detritus, glued there by a thick wad of webbing. Jon holds up the lock picks to Martin, showing him the filth sticking to the metal keys, and wipes them clean on his trousers before putting them back in his jacket. “We’re going to have to force it.” 

“Or we could just leave. We could do that. It’s not actually too late for us to leave whatever the Hell is going on here and, you know, live to see another day.” Martin’s voice is too cheerful, and he knows that, but he’s trying hard not to let his fear or his frustration come through instead. So he gives Jon a big smile through his handkerchief and hopes he can at least guess at the expression. “What do you say?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Martin. Someone could be in danger. More than one someone. If you want to leave then, well, then I understand. I won’t keep you here.” Jon looks away. He hasn’t yet touched the brass handle of the door knob.

Martin huffs, and his handkerchief blows out a little in front of his face. Above them a crystalline light sheds cobwebs like a tree in a jungle dripping vines. “I’m not going to just leave you. Who are these someones, anyway?” 

“The orphans, Martin. The children in Fielding’s care. At least three of them have been missing since this place closed a month ago.” Jon delivers these facts like they’re obvious, with no apparent realisation that he should perhaps have divulged them earlier. 

Martin tries to filter through this information whilst also resisting the urge to grab Jon and shake him. He thinks about being a teenager and coming home from school and not going back because he just couldn’t spend time growing up as well as caring for his mother. “Well, why didn’t you say that before?” 

He doesn’t hesitate this time. Instead he moves in front of the door, braces himself, and hurls his shoulder at it. The thump and creak of the wood is far too loud in the still house, and the impact hurts, but Martin grits his teeth and does it again, and again, and tries to ignore the way that every web in the house seems to be shivering the way that spider silk does when its prey finds itself caught and suffocating. 

On the fourth try, the door bursts open with a splintering crash, and Martin nearly tumbles down the stairway immediately beyond it. Indeed, he would’ve fallen if not for Jon, who grabs the back of his jacket with surprising strength and hauls him backwards. 

The staircase beyond is dark and far too clean. The stone steps disappear into shadow before Martin can see the bottom. He can feel the presence of something down there. Something waiting. Something watching. 

There’s a soft hiss and a sigh, and Martin turns to see Jon holding up a match. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough.” 

Jon’s face is bronze and gold in the flickering orange light. “It’ll have to do.” He steps forward without hesitation into the staircase. Martin almost expects the door to slam shut behind him, and hurries to follow him when it doesn’t. 

They’re halfway down the steps when the door does shut, quietly, with a soft click that lifts the hairs on the back of Martin’s neck. The match does little to help them navigate, and he finds his hands pressed against the coarse stone walls - which are dry and cool but not as cold as he’d expected. They move slowly, for what feels like far too long for any ordinary staircase, until at last they reach a doorway. 

The presence from before is almost overwhelming here. Martin cannot shake the rising, screaming sensation that some great and terrible creature is about to pounce, something that is sitting silently, waiting as they walk unwitting into its lair. 

Jon raises his hand, and the match flame flickers against the dark wood of a door frame. The doorway is open, and gapes onto darkness like a hole cut out of the world. Jon steps forward, and the light of his match catches something glinting. He steps forward and picks it up: it’s an oil lamp, freshly filled. Jon lights it. Martin blinks in the sudden glow, and stares about them. 

The room is not what he expected: the walls and ceiling are bare earth, and the only furnishings are a desk, a bookshelf and a few chairs. In the centre of the space is a dark wooden table. Martin can’t make it out from this distance in the low light, but there’s something carved on its surface. And in the middle is a small, square, wooden box. 

Jon, however, is looking elsewhere. Because there are three white human-sized lumps propped against the walls like so much furniture. Jon steps closer to one, raising the oil lamp, and Martin swallows the urge to vomit when he can make out dark curly hair peeking from the webbing. “Not again.” Jon’s voice is quiet, but the space is so still Martin thinks he could have heard his heartbeat if he concentrated. 

“Again?” Jon turns back to him, and that’s when Martin notices that the body behind him is not still. Instead it’s undulating, rippling and bulging as if it’s been filled with hundreds of tiny spheres. Spheres that are moving as if they’re…“Oh. God. Jon, step away from them.” 

Jon frowns. He’s still standing too close. Martin reaches out - and that’s when something huge and black and bristling pokes one leg down the wall from up above their heads. 

Martin doesn’t think. He grabs Jon’s arm and yanks him closer and as he does, the oil lamp flares and both of them see eight bulging black eyes as they hear the heavy weight of something huge scuttling down the wall towards them too quickly to escape. Martin thinks that maybe he screams - Jon turns and tries to run and the lamp oil splashes over both of their clothes and Martin shouts in pain as the candle goes out.

He feels rather than sees two hard bristling legs wrap around Jon’s torso and start to pull him back, and there’s a terrible chittering in the darkness and Jon cries out and Martin can’t see him so he reaches, blindly, and his fingers brush over coarse hair and hard carapace and then finally they find the fabric of Jon’s jacket. Martin wraps his fingers around Jon’s wrist and squeezes and shuts his eyes and concentrates and pulls the fog around both of them so fast it leaves him numb with cold. 

For a long moment, Martin doesn’t open his eyes. He keeps his hand wrapped around Jon’s wrist and ignores the way it’s burning, ignores the fact that he must be squeezing too tightly. Instead he keeps his shoulders hunched and waits to be devoured, or whatever else the thing had planned to do with them. 

Nothing happens. 

Slowly, he becomes aware of Jon’s breathing - too fast and too high but slowing, gradually. Then there’s a shift of fabric, and heat in front of him, like an open fire. Jon does not pull his arm away. But he puts his other arm on Martin’s shoulder. “Martin. Are you - I don’t - are you with me?” 

Martin opens his eyes. The bright white-grey of the Lonely greets him, a wide, faded expanse which overlays the house and the room that they’d been inside, swirling with fog and freezing cold. He can see the spider, skittering over its walls. But it cannot see them. Jon watches it. 

“Can it see us? Hear us?” His voice is urgent and uneven. Martin shakes his head. He doesn’t remember the last time he brought someone here, not since he left - well. And resisting the urge to give Jon’s loneliness to his god is almost overwhelming. 

He clears his throat, and forces himself to his feet. “We need to leave.” 

“Leave where?” Jon is whispering, and Martin supposes he understands why. It’s sort of like a museum, here. You know that no one wants to hear what you have to say. “The house, or this place?” 

“Both.” Martin can feel numbness sinking in. Already, his thoughts are starting to blur. Why did he bring this man here again? What was his name? He’s so terribly lonely. It’s burning out of him like a bonfire, and Martin is so cold. 

Martin starts walking - up the stairs and out of the door he’d broken. “Are you doing this, Martin?” 

Martin doesn’t reply. It’s difficult to concentrate, and he needs to hold on to something. There’s a reason he’s here. This person...They were in danger, and… 

“Martin! What are you doing?” The man next to him sounds annoyed. His handsome features are folded into sharp lines of displeasure, and his dark eyes are narrowed. He stares at Martin, and Martin feels seen in a way that he shouldn’t be. Not here. This is where he hides. But then the man’s features unfold a little, and he reaches up with his free hand to touch the side of Martin’s face. He speaks softly, but this time it’s out of kindness instead of fear. “Martin? Are you there?”

His touch burns, and Martin comes back into himself like a wave crashing onto the shore. He gasps, and tugs Jon up the faded stairs of the house, half running. “We need to hurry. I can’t...I need to concentrate. We don’t have long.”

Jon, mercifully, doesn’t argue. Instead he follows, and they get back into the room where they’d entered. The window is still open, which is just as well because when Martin looks back across the dreamlike grey-white space, he can see something huge and dark climbing up out of the basement. 

Getting out of the window without letting go of Jon is an awkward affair, but they manage to squeeze next to each other on the sill and push themselves off at the same time. They land, and Martin lets himself fall in favour of holding onto Jon’s arm. He doesn’t wait for him to steady himself before tugging him down the path. From here, the tree is burning with a blinding white light so bright it hurts to look at. Martin thinks that he can feel his skin burning, even from several feet away, and he doesn’t stop to find out. Instead he pulls Jon, breathless, onto the street proper.

London stretches out before them empty and utterly silent. The sky is nothing but a blank space. They turn a corner, and leave the house behind, and for one moment they are entirely alone. Martin feels Jon understand this - feels the fear start to rise in him, sharp and cold and irresistible. He watches Jon’s expression change, staring at him, realising that even Martin may not be real. That he is trapped forever, unwanted and alone in an empty city that has long since forgotten him. 

Martin drinks in his fear and hates himself for it, but he can breathe again, and once he’s strong enough to stand unaided, he takes a deep breath and concentrates on the sensation of burning and forces himself to let go. 

The world returns like a punch to the gut, and Martin presses his hands over his ears and closes his eyes, doubling over as sound and smell and heat and taste return - too strong and too varied and too many. There are too many people. Jon is doing much the same, and Martin can’t imagine what kind of pair they must make, doubled over like madmen in the street. But after a while, the fog wraps back around Martin like a cloak, muffling the raw intensity of the world around him. He straightens, and breathes, wiping his brow and waiting for Jon to do the same. 

Jon is standing a few feet away from him, and he makes no effort to move closer. He looks scared. Scared of Martin. Martin lets that hurt him - embraces the cold kiss of the ache in his chest. “What. The Hell. Was that?” 

Martin sighs. He thinks about his job, and his flat, and everything he’s built over the last two years. He thinks about the sheer, unadulterated luxury of getting to live a normal life. He meets Jon’s eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?” 

Jon doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I’m still not sure what possessed me to follow you to Hill Top Road. A foolish heart, I suppose, but my patron was meant to defend me from that, and my relationship with it was not yet weak enough for such connections to be easy. It kept me numb to the pains and pleasures of the world. You burned me. And then you led me into the den of a giant spider._


	5. A Forsaken Venture

“So these…,” Jon hesitates, searching for a word, “these, Entities, represent different realms of fear - and yours is the fear of being alone?”

Martin resists the urge to tell him that the Lonely isn’t his. Technically, Jon’s right. They’re tucked away in the corner of a mostly empty tea house, roughly halfway between Hilltop Road and Ghost Hunt UK. Most of the place’s patrons had found other places to be as soon as Martin had walked in, and this time Jon had noticed. 

The staff are still here, so there’s the distant clink and chime of work in the kitchen, but otherwise the place is much quieter than it ought to be. Jon keeps glancing at the door, and Martin makes a point of sitting back - trying to indicate that he won’t stop him if he tries to leave. 

“Yes, essentially.” Martin drinks his tea. It’s a little too sweet. 

“And that makes you...an avatar of the Lonely?” Jon’s mug is full and untouched. It must be cold by now. Martin tries not to let that bother him. 

Instead he tugs on his hair and huffs a polite laugh, thinking of Peter Lukas. “Oh, ah, ha! No. No, I’m more of a…,” What was he? An offering? A sacrifice? “A bonded follower. Avatars are much more powerful.” 

Jon’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “You took us into a different dimension in which there were no other people and essentially rendered us invisible and incorporeal. And you don’t consider that ‘powerful’?” 

Again, Martin thinks of Peter Lukas. “No. An avatar of the Lonely is much more frightening than me. Though hopefully you’ll never get to learn that first hand. What I did with you was just -,” (_ how I feed _), “the way I commune with it. We take people there. Draw on their fear. Sometimes we don’t let them go.” Martin looks away. There’s an ornamental cuckoo clock on the walk nearby, and it’s too loud in the quiet as Jon lets that sink in. Martin can feel Jon’s eyes on him, and resists the urge to hide his face and let himself fade into the wicker chair he’s sitting on. 

“Just before you let me go...?” Jon leaves the question hanging, and mercifully moves his gaze away from Martin, looking up at the embossed cream wallpaper instead. Martin nods, and bites the bullet of his guilt. 

“I drew on your fear. I needed it to gain the strength to get us out of there.” Martin clenches his teeth and looks up, forcing himself to meet Jon’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Jon. I didn’t want to do that.” He can’t say he wouldn’t do it again, though. If it was a choice between that and dying, between that and leaving Jon in that place? He’d take a little of his fear any day. 

Jon nods. “I understand.” Martin thinks he might, he certainly looks less confused than he did half an hour ago. “So - fear, our fear, sustains you and creatures like you?” Martin can’t decide whether to let Jon’s implication sting, so instead he lets it roll off him. 

“Basically, yeah.”

“But you still eat?” Jon gestures to the empty plate on which a scone had been placed all of fifteen minutes ago. Martin’s stomach rumbles. The cake had been delicious, but it’s getting late and he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He suspects that Jon hasn’t either. 

“Well, yeah. I mean. Despite my...allegiances,” unwilling or otherwise, “I’m still human. I think. I sort of need both. I feel hunger, and exhaustion, and - other things. But if I don’t feed the Lonely then, well.” Martin chews the inside of his cheek. “Bad things happen.” 

Jon leans forward in his chair. “What kind of bad things?”

Martin very deliberately ignores the prickling heat itching across his chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“But -,”

“Jon. I won’t ask again.” Jon watches him for a moment, and his gaze is sharp and piercing. Martin entertains the impression that he could get any answer he wanted if he just looked for long enough. But then Jon waves at a waiter, motioning for the bill. The man walks close enough to touch him and ignores him entirely. 

Martin supposes that would scare some people. As it is, Jon huffs and glares at Martin. “Would you?” 

Martin tries to keep down his own smile. He'd never really considered the idea that someone could find out about what he was and just be annoyed. It’s strangely comforting, and worth the burning across his chest. He clears his throat, and the waiter jumps, startled, turning and looking at them as if they’d just appeared out of thin air, despite the fact that he’d served them himself 40 minutes ago. Martin gives him a polite smile, and waits for the man to move past his hesitation and step closer, warily, to the table. His fear is prickling and delightful, and Martin drinks a little of it in before he speaks. “Could we get the bill, please?”

The waiter nods and hurries away before Martin can say anything else. When Martin turns to Jon, Jon is frowning. Martin raises his eyebrows."What?”

“What did you to him?” Jon’s tone is openly suspicious, though he keeps his voice quiet. 

Martin sets his tea cup, teaspoon and napkin into a neat pile. “I didn’t hurt him, if that’s what you’re asking.” Jon says nothing, but his glare suggests that this answer isn’t good enough. Martin rolls his eyes and gets to his feet, speaking softly. “I have an effect on people. They tend to forget I’m there. And when you’re with me, that passes over to you. Think of it like, I don’t know, radiation.” 

“Or a bad smell.” Jon mutters, pushing his chair back. Its legs scrape on the floorboards. Martin grins.

“Are you saying I smell?” 

Jon isn’t looking at him, and he freezes with one arm in his coat when Martin asks the question, looking up at him with no small amount of embarrassment. “Oh, no, no not at all. I just meant,” Jon pauses, seeing the smile trembling at the corner of Martin’s lips. “You’re joking.” He does not sound amused. “This is not a laughing matter, Martin.”

Martin shrugs. “I guess. But it’s also my life. It’s kind of nice to poke fun at it.” He nods at the waiter, who has yet to return to their table. “I’ll get the bill.” Jon opens his mouth, and Martin holds up a hand. “Don’t bother. It’ll take you the rest of the day to make him remember you exist for long enough to pay. You’d be better off just walking out.” Jon looks positively insulted, and Martin nods, pulling out his wallet. “That’s what I thought. Be right back.”

The street is dark when they step outside, and much colder. Jon shivers, and the orange glow of the street lamps light the grey in his hair with copper, like dying embers in a coal fire. Martin frowns at him as he wraps his arms around his chest. “Are you warm enough?” He’s halfway to shrugging off his jacket. Considering the difference in their size, it’ll work well enough as an overcoat. 

Jon is already shaking his head, but Martin had mostly expected that, so he takes off his coat anyway and holds it out. Jon grimaces. “Won’t you be cold?” 

Martin shrugs. “I don’t need as much warmth as you do. Please? I’m sure my editor won’t forgive me if you catch your death. The litigation alone -”, he trails off, hoping Jon catches his reference to earlier. After a moment Jon snorts, though he doesn’t smile, and takes the jacket in both hands. It’s much too big for him, but once he’s buttoned it he relaxes a little, buried in the wool up to his nose. 

“I feel like a child.” He mutters, and his words are muffled by the thick fabric. Martin smiles a little, wearing only his shirt sleeves and waistcoat. The cold wind runs over his skin like a silk scarf.

“You won’t be winning any prizes for fashion. But I get the sense that that wasn’t your priority anyway.” 

Jon makes a non-committal sound, and Martin gestures down the street, in the vague direction of Ghost Hunt UK. “Shall we?” 

Jon doesn’t reply, he just starts walking. Martin follows him. 

London at night is an inverse of itself, a version of London that has been cut out in rubber and stamped in black ink. The dark angles and geometry of rooftops are black silhouettes against a charcoal sky, and shadows creep in bubbles and pools across the pavement where the lamplight doesn’t reach. The flickering glow and rich smell of burning oil turns the cobblestones golden and surreal, and strangers seem much stranger in their hats and coats, faces hidden in the dark as they hurry home or elsewhere. 

Martin doesn’t receive any odd looks, though Jon gets a few, swaddled as he is in a coat far too big for him. Even in daytime, Londoners don’t make much of an effort to make eye contact, and at night the inclination to look away grows even stronger. 

It doesn’t take them long to get back to the office. The moon is hidden by the clouds, and there’s no hope of seeing the stars - so the shadows are deep and dark along the path to the front door of Ghost Hunt UK. In the shadows of the grass, Martin catches the gleam of a silvery looking worm, and wrinkles his nose. Jon pauses, and his hands are slow and stiff with cold as he takes off Martin’s jacket and fishes for his keys. There’s a very faint light coming through the glass of the door, and Martin wonders which of Jon’s co-workers has decided to stay late. 

Eventually, Jon finds his key and slots it into the lock. The snap of the door unlocking is too loud on the quiet street, and Martin’s shoulders stiffen. He’s still half expecting the spider from Hill Top Road to make a reappearance. Jon steps inside, then pauses and turns back to Martin, who's standing just outside the threshold. “Well? Are you coming in?” 

Martin thinks about that. Gerry will be worried. He usually stays late for him, and the few times Martin has come back later than he meant to Gerry has been brittle and irritable with concern. Of course, the fact that he’s done about half of what he meant to do today and spent the rest of it running away from giant spiders doesn’t help. 

But he gets the sense that he isn’t quite finished with Jonathan Sims yet. So Martin nods, and follows him inside. 

The first thing Martin notices when they step back into the office is Georgie Barker, who’s sitting at the desk behind Melanie’s, frowning at a letter in front of her. To the right of her typewriter, a fat ginger tabby cat is lying still and content. 

The second thing Martin notices when they step back into the office is the coffin. It sits in the middle of the cramped space like a bad joke, wrapped in chains as if it’s some kind of stage prop. Both Martin and Jon hesitate in the doorway, staring at the thing. Beneath the sound of the clock and the fire and the cat purring there is a very soft, muffled kind of moaning. Martin doesn’t really want to think too hard about where it’s coming from. 

Georgie looks up from her desk. If she notices Martin, she makes no remark upon it. Instead, she all but launches herself across the room at Jon, freckled face pinched in irritation. “_Jonathan Sims _ you should be in bed! Where the Hell have you been? What on earth do you think you’re doing back at work? The doctors told you to take to your bed for a month at least. AT LEAST, Jon. Do you understand what at least means? You’re not going to recover from a coma on willpower alone, even if you’re apparently intent on trying.” Georgie stops in her tirade to frown, lifting her hand to brush a stray cobweb from Jon’s hair. Martin looks away. “Why are you covered in cobwebs?” 

“There’s a coffin in the office.” Jon is not, apparently, particularly affected by Georgie’s shouting. Martin suspects that it’s not an infrequent occurrence. Georgie looks back over her shoulder at the faded yellow wood of the thing blocking Jon’s path to his desk.

“Oh, yes. Strange, isn’t it? It was delivered today. After you went out.” She glares at Jon, clearly expecting some kind of explanation. Jon is still staring at the coffin. 

“Is it safe?” 

Georgie shrugs, and her dark blue dress rustles with it. Martin wonders how relieved she’d been to get out of mourner’s black. “It hasn’t tried to eat us yet, if that’s what you mean.” 

Jon huffs a soft, exhausted sort of laugh. “I suppose that will have to do. May I sit?” He goes to move past Georgie, and Georgie stands aside. As he turns his back Georgie lifts one hand, fluttering like a bird, moving to help him. But her fingers curl, and she doesn’t. Jon carefully rounds the coffin, and sinks slowly and stiffly into his chair. 

Georgie follows him, lifting her hand to his brow as if she were his nurse. “Are you in pain?” Jon opens his mouth, and Georgie scowls. “Don’t lie to me, Jon.” 

Jon’s shoulders drop. He looks terribly small, all of a sudden, in the cramped and cluttered surroundings of his office. He glances away. “A little.” 

Georgie nods, and moves briskly to her desk. “Well then, we still have some morphine. Just. Stay still.” 

“Thank you Georgie.” Jon sounds achingly sincere. Martin looks between the two of them. Georgie is searching through her drawers, face pinched and round shoulders drawn. Jon is folded at his desk, looking halfway to falling asleep sitting upright. He thinks perhaps he should leave. 

Of course, it’s at this point that the ginger tabby cat winds itself between his legs and meows, loudly. Georgie and Martin jump, Georgie almost dropping the glass bottle in her hand. Martin waves at her a little awkwardly. “Ms Barker. Good to meet you, my name’s Martin Blackwood.”

Georgie is frowning at him, and after a long moment she raises one finger, as if to catch her own idea in the air. “You were in the hospital. With Antonio.” 

Martin stays in the doorway. The cat winds itself around his legs, purring. “I assure you, I was not with that man. We were simply visiting at the same time. An unhappy coincidence, but a coincidence all the same.” 

“He’s telling the truth.” Jon’s eyes are shut, and his expression is stiff in the way people’s faces get when they’re in a great deal of pain and trying not to show it. “He serves a different master. Also he’s a journalist. And he saved my life. You will not believe the things I’ve learned today.” 

Georgie raises her eyebrows and gives Martin a once over. “Considering that within the last year we blew up a circus of living mannequins, that’s quite the assertion. Well, Mr Blackwood, come in. Don’t mind the coffin.”

Martin does mind the coffin. It’s giving his nerves the abrasive equivalent of hearing nails scraping down a blackboard. But he comes inside anyway, and awkwardly squeezes into the red leather chair in front of Jon’s desk, carefully tucking in his feet so they don’t touch the wood. The cat chirps, and hops up onto his lap, though it also avoids the morbid wooden elephant in the room. This close, Martin can feel the warmth humming off the wood as if it’s a physical thing. He presses himself back into his chair. 

Georgie gives Jon a small glass of clear morphine, and offers Martin brandy. “You both look like death warmed up.” She offers as an explanation. Martin takes the drink gratefully, embracing the biting caramel taste and letting it burn him back to wakefulness. 

The cat in Martin’s lap kneads his thighs, purring. Martin hesitates with his hand over its head. Jon finally opens his eyes. He offers Martin the ghost of a smile, though the skin around his eyes is taught. He picks up the glass of morphine and drinks it, wrinkling his nose and coughing a little as he sets the glass down. He dabs at his mouth with the clean side of his handkerchief, and nods at the cat. “Don’t mind the Admiral, he’s harmless.” 

Cautiously, Martin scratches the cat’s ears. He half expects it to flinch away when it feels how cold he is. But instead, the Admiral bumps his head up into Martin’s open palm, purring loudly. Martin blinks rapidly, and gingerly sinks his fingers into the Admiral’s soft fur. 

Georgie puts her hands on her hips. “Well, the Admiral likes you. I suppose that’s something.” She crosses her arms. “So what did you do to Jon?”

Jon drops his hands from where he’d been massaging his temples, and moves his chair to the side. He doesn’t say anything, but Georgie drags another chair closer so she can sit next to him. “He didn’t do anything to me. If anything, I quite substantially diverted his work.” Jon pauses, and looks across his desk at Martin as if this has only just occurred to him. “I’m sorry about that.” 

Martin rubs the back of his neck. “I mean. I chose to follow you. I didn’t have to.” It’s not nothing, exactly. Martin suspects that he’ll be working long into the night. But Jon is alive, and that’s more important than a lost night’s sleep. Martin doesn’t think he’s so far gone as to think otherwise. 

Georgie looks between them. The Admiral gets up out of Martin’s lap, padding across Jon’s desk and into Georgie’s arms. She lifts him to her chest, pressing him close, and yawns. “Are you two going to fill me in, or?” 

Jon turns to her, and his dark features are softer than they’ve been all day. “You should sleep, George. It’s late. We can talk tomorrow.” 

Martin swallows his own jealousy and looks down at his hands. Georgie clicks her tongue. “And what are you going to do? Stay here and work all night? I’m not leaving until you do Jon.”

“Georgie,” Jon begins, but she interrupts him.

“Don’t ‘Georgie’ me. I don’t care if you’re the first man to wake up from six months without a heartbeat. You’re tired and you’re in pain and I am not letting you work yourself into an early grave.” Georgie hesitates, and her voice is a little loud when she adds, flustered. “Not again.” 

Martin drinks some more of his brandy. Jon’s fingers curl into tight fists on his desk. “And what are we going to do about the coffin?” 

“The coffin will be here in the morning. As will Mr Blackwood. Won’t you, Martin?” Georgie turns to him now, and her eyes are blazing with a determination Martin isn’t used to seeing in anyone. He clears his throat and thinks about Gerry and the job he’s actually paid to do.

“I mean - well, I could be here in the afternoon, certainly. I have to finish this story, but.” He hesitates and looks at Jon, who’s watching him far too closely. Who’s watching him as if he cares whether or not he’ll see Martin tomorrow. Prickling heat spreads across Martin’s chest. “Yeah. I’ll be here.” 

Georgie nods, satisfied. “Good man.” She turns to Jon. “Can you stand?” Her tone is suddenly, infinitely more gentle. Jon looks away from her, almost embarrassed, shooting a furtive look at Martin as if to check whether he’s watching.

“Yes, I’m fine Georgie.” Martin rolls his eyes, and catches Georgie doing the same. She gives him a quick, bright, crooked grin that dimples her freckled cheeks. Martin huffs a soft, surprised laugh. Jon glares at both of them. “If you two are quite done, I nearly died today.” 

“Oh, so now you’ll admit it’s a problem.” Georgie protests, this time smiling widely, and Jon’s mouth quirks up in half a grin despite the frown he’s struggling to maintain. Martin smiles too, and gives the Admiral a quick stroke when Georgie sets him down on Jon’s desk. Georgie continues as she moves across the office, skirting the coffin to pick up her coat. “You still haven’t explained that by the way. Where the Hell were you?” 

Jon hesitates, and turns to Martin whilst Georgie’s back is turned, shaking his head and pressing a finger to his lips. Martin blinks, and nods. Jon clears his throat. “It was nothing. A dead end.” 

Georgie turns and buttons her frock coat, a sky blue woolen affair that looks lovely against her copper hair. She squints up at Jon from where she stands nearly a foot shorter than him. “Fine. Tell me later.” 

The three of them walk out of the office. None of them mention the fact that when Georgie locks the door, the coffin starts singing. 

Jon and Georgie get a cab, though Georgie offers more than once to pay for one for Martin as well. Despite his unique circumstances, Martin still can’t really wrap his head around such an unnecessary expense, and on his third polite but firm refusal, Jon lightly takes Georgie’s hand in his and insists that they leave, apologising to Martin. Martin is too distracted by their joined hands to really accept the apology, and suspects that Jon leaves under the impression that Georgie’s generosity had somehow upset him. He’s sure he’ll feel guilty about it later. 

For now, though, he walks the streets of London - coat buttoned to keep up the thin charade that he feels the cold. It’s a long way home, but he stops en route to sit quietly and invisibly beside a man asleep on the street, drinking his dreams and his fear and the deep long ache of his loneliness. When he’s done, Martin slips a five pound note into the man’s pocket, and pushes a little fog around him in the hope that it’ll keep him safe from harm, at least until day breaks and dispels the dangers of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I had belonged to Forsaken for just over three years when I met you. The first of those I do not like to linger on. The subsequent two were spent at my work with the newspaper, playing the charade of a normal life. I should have known it wouldn’t last. I think I did. We returned to your office, and the coffin was waiting for us. There’s some poetry in that._


	6. An Affair of Both Personal and Professional Interest

Gerry is, as Martin imagined might be the case, not especially impressed with him on Friday morning. Martin makes his apologies under his manager’s glowering, and then hunches over his desk and starts writing. It’s a half-decent thing, he thinks - albeit with more adjectives than there should be to pad out the lack of detail and a headline that he’s fairly certain will make Jon shout at him.

Martin tugs the paper from his typewriter, ink still wet, and walks over to Gerry’s desk - waiting for him to finish writing what seems to be an exceptionally angry letter, judging by the pressure he’s putting on his fountain pen. Gerry’s long hair is a little lank and tangled in its ponytail. His shirt is crumpled as ever, and Martin suspects that it’s the one he was wearing yesterday. Martin frowns at the untouched cup of coffee on Gerry’s crowded desk, and runs his fingers over the cheap paper they’ve been afforded for drafts by their editor. 

Finally, Gerry finishes his letter with what is not so much a flourish as an inky stab wound, and sets down his pen, leaning far back in his chair and away from his desk. His fingers curl into tight fists, stretching over his knuckles before they rigidly uncurl and Gerry looks at him. The light of day doesn’t do him any favours: his face is almost bruised with fatigue, and a few pimples are running up around his hairline. His lips are chapped, and his eyes are a little bloodshot. Gerry holds out his hand, and Martin presents the piece of paper.

“Gerry, are you -?”

“You still have obituaries to do, Martin.” Gerry cuts him off, sharply, and Martin startles, only remembering as an afterthought to accept the cool balm the cruelty offers him. Gerry softens, and he slumps forward a little in his chair, gesturing to the clock. “Sorry. Let me hit the weekend deadline, then we’ll talk.” 

Martin nods and heads back to his desk, picking up a heavy stack of letters that constitute the weekend papers’ obituary requests. It’s tedious enough work, keeping a ledger of who’s paid for what and how much, which have been approved and which rejected. Writing the things themselves is not what could be considered cheering, more often than not, but Martin finds a strange kind of peace in it. Besides, thanks to his unintentional evacuation of the office, finishing these last chores alone has become something of a routine for him, and he does his work diligently. 

It gets to midday, and Martin finishes what he has, sorting the stack of paper into a bundle that can be run over to the printing press. Gerry glances over the pieces, dark eyes flickering across the pages faster than Martin can follow. When he’s given them a once over, he adds them to the pile and hands off his own stack of papers with them. Then he turns back to his desk and the empty office, and picks up his coat, nodding at Martin. “Lunch?” 

Martin grins. “Of course.” It’s the highlight of his week. 

They don’t go far, finding a small, dilapidated little cafe that can barely fit more than 20 people on a good day. Martin is fairly sure that Gerry thinks he’s intimidated by or averse to the other more comfortable establishments in the area. Whilst that’s partially true (Martin hadn’t exactly come from wealth), it’s mostly because here, at least, Martin doesn’t feel too terrible about costing the place business at peak time on a Friday. He always makes sure to order the most expensive things on the menu, anyway. 

They order their food, and Gerry lets out a long, shaking breath, dropping his head into his hands and folding his long pale fingers over the back of his head. 

“Long week?” Martin asks, gently. 

Gerry’s shoulders sag as he huffs something that might be a laugh or else an eloquent sigh, and he doesn’t look up when he replies, “just a little. How was yours?” 

Martin tilts his head, thinking about Jonathan Sims and Hill Top Road. “I’d say I can’t complain but, well, I’m half English. It’s in my blood.” This time Gerry does laugh, sitting up and passing his hand over his forehead.

“Quite a pair we make.” He offers Martin a wry smile, and Martin returns it, raising his glass of water. Gerry toasts it, and drinks quickly in long gulps. Martin watches him. 

“Have you been eating?” With anyone else, Martin would consider beating around the bush. But this is Gerry, and he knows Martin as well as - well, anyone left who counts. 

Gerry lifts one narrow shoulder in a shrug. “I eat when I can.” It’s not much of an answer, and Martin makes no effort to hide the fact he’s giving Gerry a look over. His shirt doesn’t fit well, though Martin’s sure he bought it a month ago. He’s losing weight, fast. Too fast.

“Are you sick?” 

Gerry pours himself another glass of water from the jug on their table and drinks it like it’s neat whiskey. “After a fashion.” 

Martin bites the inside of his cheek. “That’s not an answer, Gerry.” 

Gerry shakes his head, and looks out the window at the street. It’s busy enough for a Friday afternoon, and it’s a better day than yesterday. Sunlight dances on the coat of a black cab horse. Someone shouts about selling flowers. Pigeons fight over scraps on the cobblestones. “I really can’t tell you.” Gerry says the words like they hurt. 

For just a moment, Martin has the distinct impression of being watched. He turns, but there’s still no one else in the cafe but the staff. When he turns back to the table, the sensation is gone. He pulls the fog up around him anyway, cold and invisible and numbing. Gerry shivers, and Martin hums. “Must be a draft.” 

He doesn’t like lying. But it’s better this way, if Gerry doesn’t know. For both of them. 

After a little too long, their waitress comes back with two steaming bowls of soup. They begin to eat, and for a long while silence stretches between them: a quiet that starts a little awkwardly and melts into something more comfortable with the kindness of time. 

When they’ve finished, Martin dabs his mouth and says, more confidently than he feels, “I want to do a column about Ghost Hunt UK.” 

It’s like he’s flipped one of Edison’s switches. Gerry’s expression darkens and closes. He sets down his napkin, and gestures for the bill. The waitress immediately sets about fetching it. Then Gerry turns back to Martin. “No. Absolutely not.” 

Martin stares. He’s worked for The Observer for just over two years. In that time, Gerry has been his one and only direct supervisor. And it’s only now that he’s doing it that Martin realises up until this point, Gerry has never outright told him no. Sure, he’s argued the point. Sometimes Martin has let it go. But Gerry has never just dismissed him out of hand, and certainly not since they became, well, friends? Friendly coworkers, at least. 

Despite himself, Martin feels a spark of irritation. “What do you mean no?” 

Gerry shrugs, but he doesn’t meet Martin’s eyes. “I mean no. I will not approve that column.” 

Martin frowns. “Why?” 

Gerry raises his eyebrows. “You mean apart from the fact that they’re a group of dangerous lunatics chasing stories that mothers scare their children with?” Martin opens his mouth to protest, but Gerry leans forward, and the china on the table clinks as he does so. “Do you know how Jonathan Sims ended up in a coma?” 

“I,” Martin pauses, and shuts his mouth. He doesn’t, actually. Gerry’s lips press into a thin line. 

“He blew himself up, Martin.” Martin has questions. Several, in fact, but Gerry continues. “He and his friends went into a building and they blew themselves up. Jonathan Sims is not just delusional, he’s dangerous. So no, I will not commit time or money to one of my best reporters putting himself at _ risk of his life _ on what is little more than a wild goose chase. Or worse.” 

“Alright, but -,” 

The waitress returns, and Gerry pays, getting to his feet. Martin does the same, picking up his coat. “But what if I - ?”

“No. This isn’t up for debate, Martin. Do you understand?” Gerry pauses, coat buttoned, to meet his eyes. The cafe feels painfully empty, and again, suddenly, Martin gets the terrible sense that he’s being watched. Martin flushes, and shoves his hands into his pockets. 

“Yes, fine, I get it.” He pauses, and glances back at the other door. Normally he and Gerry would head back to the office now, talk a little about the week ahead, throw around ideas for editorials. Instead, Martin jerks his thumb at the exit. “Well. I’ve got things to do. See you Monday.” 

Gerry’s expression flickers from annoyed to confused and quickly segues into concern. Martin walks away from him before he can say anything, and once he’s out of the door steps straight into the Lonely. It’s a cheap trick, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t remember the last time he had an argument with Gerry, or if he ever has. But it leaves a bad taste in his mouth and his thoughts in a mess of jagged blame and embarrassment. It’s easier to just sink into the quiet cold of solitude. So he does that instead. 

* * *

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon when Martin finds himself back outside the front door of Ghost Hunt UK, hands deep in his pockets, thinking a little sheepishly that he owes Gerry an apology and a bottle of decent whiskey after all this. It’s not enough to stop him, but he does at least have the good grace to feel a modicum of embarrassment as he raises his fist to the door. Part of him feels like a teenager, sneaking around behind his guardian’s back. Not that Martin ever got to do that, really. 

It doesn’t take long for a tall, slender shadow to come to the fogged glass of the door. Martin fidgets with a loose thread in the lining of his pocket whilst they wrangle the lock. It clicks open, and the door swings wide to reveal Jon, freshly bathed and, if the colour in his cheeks and the neatness of his clothes is any kind of indicator, well rested. His dark hair is a mess of tousled curls, and he gestures Martin inside with no apparent indication of surprise. “Martin, come in.” 

Martin decides to save his questions until he’s off the street, and follows Jon down the hall and into the office where he’s greeted by two new faces, one of which he almost recognises. It’s enough, certainly, to make Martin choose to be a little less inconspicuous. He steps forward and holds out his hand to the tall, dark, handsome man standing next to the coffin in the middle of the office. “Good afternoon, my name’s Martin Blackwood. There’s no chance you know Danny Stoker, is there?” 

The man stares at him. Next to him, a short blonde woman does much the same. Jon, halfway to the kitchen, stops with one foot over the threshold and turns around, following Martin’s gaze but not quite looking directly at the man to whom he’s speaking.

Jon says, “What did you just say?”

The man says, “Who the fuck are you?” 

Martin blinks, pulling his hand back, and decides to deal with the angrier situation first. “Um, Martin Blackwood. I work for The Observer? Jon might have mentioned me?” He turns back to Jon for some kind of assistance. Surely Jon had mentioned him, in an office this small? They’d nearly died yesterday. Surely that was worth mentioning?

Jon just stares at him, mouth slightly ajar. The short blonde woman puts her hand on the taller man’s arm, and gives Martin a kind smile. “Sorry, I think we’re just a little confused. Are you some kind of monster?” 

Martin blushes. “Um. Jon?” His voice breaks, and the taller man snorts. The woman elbows him in the ribs. 

Jon steps forward, careful to avoid the coffin and the warmth bleeding out of it into the office in a steady stream. “Martin, what exactly is going on?” 

Martin gestures to the couple in front of him. “Well, your colleague looks like someone I interviewed a while back. I just. I was just wondering whether there was any kind of connection?” He looks helplessly between Jon and the tall stranger. The stranger looks angry, and he’s as tall as Martin, which isn’t really reassuring. Martin fights the urge to pull the cold up around him like a shield. 

Jon is harder to read. His jaw and eyes are tight, but his hands are loosely curled at his sides and he’s breathing deeply. “Describe my colleague.” 

Martin frowns. “Um. Tall, dark, broad, brown eyes, square jaw? Looks like he wants to punch me? Standing about two feet in front of you?”

Jon shuts his eyes and sets one hand on the nearest desk, leaning on it heavily. He swallows, clears his throat, and then opens his eyes and looks at the space about six inches to the right of the stranger’s head. “Hello, Tim.” 

The stranger, Tim, crumples a little, stepping back as if he’s been punched, the tension rushing out of him like air from a balloon. His face twists in an emotion that got lost somewhere between fury and grief. He tries to speak, and chokes, and starts again, raising one hand in a wave. “Hey Jon. You look awful.” 

Jon glances at Martin, who still feels like he’s missing something important, here. “What’s he saying?” 

That’s it. Martin stares between Jon and the couple. “You can’t see them?” 

Jon looks startled. “There’s someone else here?” He turns to another corner of the room, as if they’d be standing on Georgie’s desk or wedged into the corner by the window. Martin almost laughs, but instead he nods and gestures to where the woman is. 

“Yeah. She’s right there. Short, blonde, green eyes?” 

Jon’s expression folds, briefly, into a grief deeper than any Martin has ever seen on anyone’s face but his own. Then he nods to himself, and steps closer to Martin, looking at the space in front of him but not fixing on any particular spot. “Sasha.” 

Sasha waves, gives both of them a somewhat wobbly smile. “Hello.” 

Jon looks at Martin. “Are they responding? Are they...I don’t know where to start.” He’s half smiling, voice thick, and when he blinks tears run quickly down his cheeks. He brushes them away irritably, not pausing to let himself weep. “This is. This is incredible.” 

“If this is some kind of trick then I’m going to climb out of my grave to kill you myself,” the tall one, Tim, says, glowering. Martin swallows and nods. 

“Understood. But honestly, if it’s a trick, then I don’t know what I’m doing. I swear, on my mother’s life.” The air shivers with the promise. The woman, Sasha, gives Martin another gentle smile. 

“We’re dead. Jon can’t see us. No one can. Except you apparently.” 

Tim scowls at him. “Yeah. Why is that? You’re sort of...Blurry. Are you dead too? How come Jon can see you and not us?” 

Martin holds up his hands. He’s painfully aware of Jon’s eyes on him, piercing and sharp, apparently watching him have a conversation with empty air. “Um, wait, slow down. I think I have an idea of why I can see you. I don’t know why Jon can’t. And uh, Jon, um, Tim says you look awful.” Jon barks a startled laugh, and a flicker of a handsome smile appears, briefly, on Tim’s face. Martin feels a little of the tension drop out of his shoulders. “Sasha says hello.” 

Jon shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and swiping at his cheeks with his thumb. “Right. Ha! Sasha.” He says her name as a heavy sigh, and Martin glances over his shoulder at the two dust covered desks. “How’ve you been?” 

Sasha shrugs. “Dead, mostly.” Tim laughs at that, and Martin makes the executive decision not to convey it back to Jon. Instead, he draws a deliberately visible thread of fog into the air. Jon stares, fascinated, and Martin can’t quite shake the mental image of a cat with a piece of string. Sasha and Tim lean back, wary. 

“This is why I can see you. I belong to the Lonely. It’s...Do you know what that is?” 

Sasha and Tim exchange a look. Sasha speaks. “We’ve been doing our reading. Or, at least, what we can. That’s the Lukas family, right?” Martin bristles at the name, and is silently grateful Jon can’t hear it. 

“Yes, that’s right,” he replies. Tim narrows his eyes.

“So what are you doing here?” His gaze shifts to Jon, and there’s a flicker, and then Martin finds himself face to face with Tim’s broad chest. He can faintly make out Jon through his torso, and it’s a disconcerting illusion, to say the least. Tim scowls at him. “He’s a lonely bastard, but he’s not your dinner mate.” 

There’s another flicker, and Sasha presses up against Tim’s shoulder, so that the pair of them are forming an ethereal wall between Martin and Jon. Martin raises both hands in a performance of surrender. “I’m not here to eat Jon, I promise.” 

“Eat me?” Jon’s voice is too high and too loud in the quiet office, and Tim’s mouth pulls up into half a smile before he straightens it. “Martin? You said nothing about eating people.” 

Sasha tilts her head to the side and looks up at Tim. “Isn’t that more the Flesh’s deal?” 

Tim taps his chin, making a show of thinking about it. “You know, I think you’re right. This one’s more likely to give us the cold shoulder. Am I right?” He raises his eyebrows at Martin, and Sasha groans. 

Martin rolls his eyes. “Yes, let’s all mock the eldritch fear monster. That’s a great idea.” 

Tim shrugs his broad shoulders. “I mean, what are you going to do? Kill me?” 

Martin grits his teeth. Because he really doesn’t want to do this, but the world isn’t kind enough to give you two gentle monsters in a row. “If you must know, this.” He reaches out, and he _ pulls _on the fog inside and around him, and it rushes forward like a hungry dog, and Sasha disappears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I was Lonely, but I was not alone. Gerry Keay had been my closest friend and confidante for two years, and this was due in no small part to our decision not to mention one another’s strangeness. I think we both deluded ourselves with the notion that what was not spoken was not known. He - I loved him. Dearly. Still, that’s of no matter now. I had met Danny Stoker a year and a half previous. He had just published a book on forgotten ruins: what he referred to as the veins of London, running red beneath our feet. He was terribly charming. I did not know he died._


	7. On The Edge of the Abyss

Tim stares at the place where Sasha had been. It’s strange that a ghost can go pale, but he does, moving forward and waving his hand through the air where she had been. “Sash? Sasha?” He starts to shout. “SASHA? WHERE ARE YOU?” Martin flinches, though he supposes Tim is long past worrying about the neighbours. Speaking of whom: Tim turns around and tries to grab Martin’s shoulders. His fingers slip through them, leaving nothing but the sensation of icy cold. The cold of the Lonely and the cold of the End are like two different shades of black, but the End will do in a pinch, and Martin drinks it gratefully, soaking in Tim’s rising panic. “What did you do to her? Where did she go? _ SASHA!” _

Martin waits until Tim meets his eyes, and he doesn’t flinch. “We don’t just feed on the living.” And he lets go. Sasha reappears weeping, and she and Tim fold into each other’s arms between one heartbeat and the next. Martin lets himself feel the cold ache of longing and knows he deserves it. Jon watches him. 

“What did you do to them?” 

“Nothing. I just scared them a little, is all. They need to know they’re not safe just because they’re dead.” Martin speaks without thinking, but he knows he hadn’t meant to tell Jon that much. His jaw snaps shut so fast his teeth hurt, and he frowns and thinks of Gerry. 

(_ Jonathan Sims is not just delusional. He’s dangerous _.)

Martin’s voice is soft when he asks, coolly, “What did you just do?” 

Jon frowns. “I...asked you a question?” 

Martin shakes his head. An anger that isn’t quite his own is making the temperature of the room drop, rapidly. “No. Something else. You did something to me.” The fire goes out. 

Jon seems to notice the change in the air, because he steps back and stands up, raising his dark, slender hands. “Martin, I assure you, I have done nothing to you. I swear.” 

“That’s a _ lie_.” There’s frost creeping across the inside of the windows, despite the sunny afternoon outside. Thick white fog begins to creep across the floor. Martin isn’t sure where he ends and where something else begins, something cold and terrible and infinite.

Which is when Tim punches him. 

It doesn’t do much - his fist passes straight through Martin’s cheek and Tim stumbles a little with the momentum. But the aching cold of the End through his head is enough to snap Martin out of wherever he’d been going, and he gasps, feeling the burn of the chilled air as if he was breathing smoke over an open flame. He doubles over, and Jon rushes to his side, and Martin wants to push him away, wants to remind him that he’s a monster and that people like Jon should keep their distance from things like him. Jon doesn’t touch him, but his presence is too bright and too hot and Martin flinches away from it, squeezing his eyes shut as tears of pain run fat and tickling down his cheeks. 

It takes both an eternity and about ninety seconds for Martin to compose himself, and when he does he turns to leave, embarrassed and, somewhere underneath it, deeply afraid. “I’m sorry, I should - I’m sorry. To all of you, I didn’t mean to - I’m so sorry. I’ll see myself out.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous Martin.” Jon’s hands are like fire brands on Martin’s arms, and Martin flinches back from them and all but falls into the chair Jon had pulled over for him. Tim and Sasha, calm again now, watch them both and say nothing. Jon leans into Martin’s space, so close his breath falls like a tobacco stained hot day onto Martin’s cheeks and chin. “Are you alright?” 

Martin holds his breath and nods. Jon withdraws, hurrying to the kitchen and busying himself with something loud and clattering. Martin takes a moment to listen and breathe. Tim looms over him. 

“Don’t do that again.” 

Martin looks up at him, exhausted, and blinks against the loneliness that shimmers around the edges of Tim’s body like a halo. “Which part?” 

Martin thinks if he’d been corporeal, Tim would have been shaking under the tension running through his body. As it is, he is unnaturally still. “Sasha. Don’t do that again. I might not be able to hurt you now, but I _will_ find a way.” 

Martin nods, and swallows back bile as a migraine begins to pierce its way through his skull. “That’s fair. I’m sorry. It was cruel of me.” He hesitates, and looks at Sasha. “I needed you to understand. Ghosts - they’re contested territory. But they’re addictive to the Lonely. Trapped. Isolated. Making it worse is like...getting high. I don’t think anyone else would bother resisting it.” 

“Well thank you for your mercy.” Tim says, bitterly. 

Sasha shakes her head. “No. I believe him. In that.” She shudders. “In the place he sent me. I could still see you.” She turns to Martin. “You didn’t have to do that, did you? You could’ve hidden him from me, like you hid me from him?” 

Martin nods. Bile rises in his throat. He’d made it as quick as he could. Jon returns from the kitchen and presses something warm and steaming into Martin’s hands. His fingertips brush Martin’s and it burns, but Martin lets the pain bring him back to his humanity. With it comes lucidity - enough to notice that Jon’s teeth are chattering. Martin makes a face and tries to stand. 

“The fire. I’m sorry, Jon, I didn’t mean to -,” Jon waves him off, gently pressing Martin back down into his chair. 

“I’ll deal with that. Stay still and drink your tea.” He pauses and adds, stiffly, as an afterthought. “You’ll feel better.” 

Martin does as he’s told. Jon rekindles the fire, and after a few moments the sound of snapping wood fills the space once more. It’s a comforting sound, and Martin lets himself sink a little deeper into his chair. Eventually, Jon moves back to sit at his desk. He looks at Martin, and Martin meets his eyes. “So.”

Martin drinks a little more tea. “So.” 

“Do you...often lose control?” Jon is clearly making an effort to phrase the question gently, but he only succeeds in making himself look constipated. 

Martin’s head hurts. “No. No, I don’t...Not since the beginning.” (Not since Peter.) Jon nods, taking that in. Martin takes a deep breath, and sets down his mug on the carpet. He makes a point of not moving closer to Jon than he has to. “I really should go. If I can’t control this,” he gestures vaguely to himself, “then you’re in danger. And despite all appearances,” Martin forces half a laugh, “I don’t actually want to hurt you, Jon.” He gets to his feet and moves quickly to the door. “It was.” He stops, with the idiotic sensation that his heart has somehow lodged itself in his throat. Jon is halfway to standing, looking stricken, face painted the colour of old gold in the lamplight. “It was good. To meet you. I wish you well.” 

And he turns and steps into the icy embrace of the Lonely. 

Or at least, he intends to. What actually happens is that he steps into and through Tim and Sasha, which rather throws him off his balance. Martin stumbles, and curses under his breath in Polish, ignoring the echo of his mother chastising him for using the language for little else.

Tim looms over him, and he’s just a little translucent in the half lit hall. “Yeah, see, this is all very sweet and noble, but there’s actually something we need to tell you.”

Martin pushes himself off the wall and straightens his shirt, glaring at Tim. “Is it more important than Jon’s life?” 

“Either you’re still labouring under the impression that there’s a bone in your body that could kill me, or Tim and Sasha are saying something that I really need to know.” Jon says, calmly. He’s standing in the door to the office, and Martin, in the much more narrow hall, can’t quite shake the sense of being trapped.

Martin whirls on him, tired and hurt and mostly just overwhelmingly exasperated. “I could kill you, Jon! And I could do worse. I could leave you alone, forever, trapped. No more Melanie, no more Georgie, no more cat. I am a real and present danger to your continued existence and this was a terrible idea and that’s exactly why you should let me go.” He doesn’t mean to shout, not really. But it’s all getting to be a bit much. 

Jon doesn’t flinch. “First, his name is The Admiral. Second, I _know_.” The last word is emphatic, and Jon steps closer. Martin steps back, and ignores the part of him that thinks, deliriously, it feels like waltzing. “You took me there. I understand. But you let me go. If you wanted to kill me then you would have done it already.” Jon raises his voice when Martin goes to reply. “Or worse. I know, Martin. I know.” He pauses, and runs his eyes over Martin, and Martin can’t help feeling terribly naked under his gaze. “It hurts you, doesn’t it?” 

Martin’s mind goes blank. “What?”

“Being near me. Human connection. It...hurts you. Burns, or itches, or something?” 

“How?” Martin can barely make the word with the little air still trapped in his lungs. 

Jon shrugs, looking abruptly self conscious. “Well. You. You sort of flinch, sometimes, at strange moments. And you hold yourself oddly. Scratching at your sleeves. Little things. I thought it was just some sort of skin condition, but, ah, in light of what I know now, this seems the more likely hypothesis.” 

Martin decides to study the mortifying suggestion that Jon had spent the last two days under the impression that he had some kind of chronic rash at home later. For now he shakes his head in a futile attempt to put his thoughts into some sort of order. His headache rattles around his skull, and his vision blurs. Martin clenches his teeth and waits it out. The hallway is quiet, save the distant sound of horses and people on the street outside. “Ok, regardless, that doesn’t matter. The point is that I just lost control, and I can’t promise you I won’t do it again.” 

Jon steps closer, and Martin finds himself helplessly torn between fleeing whilst he still can and staying where he is. The stupid, tattered remnants of his heart win out. “And I’m saying that it hurts you to be here and you’re here anyway. That you saved my life, when you could have taken it. Hell, Martin, I put my hand in the lion’s mouth. But you didn’t bite it off. I highly doubt you’ll do so by accident.” 

Martin thinks that he’s never met anyone as blind to the evils of the world as Jonathan Sims. 

Jon holds out his hand. 

Martin hesitates. “In light of your metaphor, I’m not sure that’s -,”

Jon interrupts him. “It’s symbolic.” 

Martin flushes, painfully aware of Tim and Sasha, still standing in the hall and watching them. But, after another second passes - one in which he imagines he can hear the beating of his own heart - Martin reaches out and takes Jon’s hand in his. Jon squeezes, tightly, and Martin feels like his hand is on fire. But he doesn’t pull away. 

“Ok. Are you done?” Tim sounds like he crossed the line of exasperation five minutes ago and he’s been jogging steadily towards outright irritation ever since. Martin lets go of Jon’s hand.

“What is it?” 

Sasha steps forward, and she nods to the office at Jon’s back, and the faint, humming song emanating from it. “It’s about the coffin.” 

Martin’s stomach sinks. “Go on.” 

“Daisy’s in there.” Tim says, mouth set in a hard line. 

“Who?” Martin regrets the question as soon as he’s asked it. Jon steps forward, squeezing into the space beside him. He smells like soap and tobacco. 

“They’re talking about a person?” Jon’s voice is urgent, and his proximity is almost too intimate, his dark eyes glittering in the low light like distant stars. Martin ignores everything he’s feeling and lifts a hand. 

“Wait.” He says to Jon, then turns to Tim and Sasha. “Explain.” 

They do. Martin listens, and as he does he feels his heart sink further and further until it’s somewhere in the region of his ankles. Eventually, they stop, and Tim folds his arms. Sasha watches Martin, dead eyes bright with anticipation. Martin hesitates, and looks at Jon. 

The day is getting dark, and he’s not sure where Georgie or Melanie are, but he’s reluctant to let Jon embark on another life or death expedition so soon after the last one. He’d prefer it if Jon didn’t embark on such expeditions at all, but he’s quickly getting the impression that that is an unreasonably high expectation for a man as peculiar and peculiarly kind as Jonathan Sims. 

“Martin. You have to tell him.” Sasha’s tone is gentle, but firm. Martin wishes he could have met her when she was alive. 

“After the stunt you pulled earlier, it’s the least you can do.” Tim says, raising his chin. Martin glares at him.

“I was trying to save your life. Or, death. Whatever.” Martin wishes he was better at this. His head throbs. 

“By torturing us? Yeah, right. You just wanted to put the fear of god in us. Your god, specifically. It was selfish and petty and cruel and that means you owe us. If you’re really as human as he seems to think you are, you’ll grant us that much.” Tim starts loud, but he gets quieter, and by the end he’s almost gentle. He looks Martin in the eye, and very deliberately unfolds his arms, relaxing his posture. “Come on. Give the idiot that much. He deserves something for all that faith he keeps carrying around.” 

Martin shakes his head. “The world doesn’t work like that.”

“You think I don’t know that? It killed me.” Tim laughs, and it’s bitter and harsh. Then he sighs, and takes a deep breath in. “Jon deserves to know.”

“It’s dangerous.” 

Sasha steps forward, and lets her hand hover over Martin’s elbow. If Martin concentrates, he can almost imagine that she’s touching him. “It’s his decision, Martin.” 

Martin bites his cheek. Jon watches him. Tim slips his hands into his pockets. “You have to let him make his own choices. Or you’re just as bad as the rest of them.” 

Martin thinks about Peter Lukas. Heat prickles across his skin. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Then he turns to Jon. “Your friend Daisy is trapped inside that coffin. She’s alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I had not met many ghosts, but I knew enough of their loneliness to know the danger I posed to them. I was more rarely reminded of the danger I posed to everybody else. My patron: sometimes it was difficult to know what was it, its hunger, its fear, its anger, and what was my own. My mind blurred, and my body was its host. The Christians say the body is a temple. If such is the case, then mine was desecrated, such that it would burn at even the most simple human touch._


	8. A Question of Approval

“So. Just to get this straight. You managed to foil the Unknowing and I Do Not Know You with an industrial quantity of TNT and that’s...it?” Martin thinks that perhaps he needs to lie down. As it is, he takes a healthy swig of his brandy, and tentatively leans back into the plush velvet chair which he is fairly sure costs as much as all the furnishings in his flat combined. 

Georgie gives him a bright, friendly smile. Next to her, a vigorous fire spills copper and gold light over the deep red carpet. “Basically, yes. Though Jon refused to let me come along for the event itself.” She gives Jon a gentle glare, and Jon, for his part, folds a little deeper into the one patch of shadow he’s managed to find in Georgie’s lounge. The Admiral is fast asleep in his lap. 

“Someone needed to survive, in case we failed.” Jon says, not looking at either of them. 

Martin scratches his chin. “If you’d failed, no-one anywhere would have survived.” He thinks about it and shudders. “Well. Not in a way that mattered.”

Jon looks up at that, and there’s something far too old and far too tired in his eyes, which are almost black in the shadow. “Good to know someone is taking this seriously.” 

“I take it seriously!” Georgie protests, gently whacking Jon’s elbow. Half a smile flickers around the corner of Jon’s mouth and disappears. Georgie turns to Martin, and says, as if she’s explaining something, “I don’t get scared.” 

Martin raises his eyebrows. “Ever?” He’s met a handful of people over the years who labour under similar assumptions. They’re almost always wrong. They just haven’t found what they’re afraid of yet. He’s halfway to assuming that Georgie is one of them when she continues.

“I mean, I had an encounter with a creature that belonged to the End, and now I just...can’t. So all of this talk about fears and phobias is more a matter of academic interest for me, most of the time.” Georgie shrugs, and the deep green satin of her dress whispers with the movement. She takes a drink of her own brandy, and her expression grows serious. “But I’m not without feeling. I just get angry and sad, instead. And I would grieve for the world, if something killed it.”

The room smells of firewood and cat hair and tobacco. Martin stares down at the liquid amber of his brandy, slowly swirling it in the beautiful cut glass he’s been given. It catches the light in flashes of white gold. “You wouldn’t know it was gone, if The Stranger did it.” 

Georgie tilts her head to the side. “Do you think that makes it better, or worse?” 

Martin swallows. He thinks of being surrounded by everything he’d lost, and knowing how close he’d been to keeping it. He thinks about the luxury of forgetting. He wants to say it would be better not to know. Instead he drinks his brandy, and doesn’t meet Georgie’s eyes when he replies. “I don’t know.”

The lounge is on the first floor of Georgie’s house, and the ceilings are high and ornately decorated. It has one tall window that looks out over the streets of London. Georgie has yet to close the curtains, and outside the sky is a deep, dark blue. It’s quiet, at least for London, with only the occasional clip of horse hooves and an errant cat to interrupt the thick blanket of silence that has settled over the city with the dark. Across the street, a lamp flickers bravely against the cold. 

“We have to save her.” Jon’s voice is quiet, but firm. Georgie makes a soft sound of displeasure. 

“It’s nine o’clock on a Friday night. We don’t have to talk about this now. And we have a guest.” She gestures to Martin. Martin would really rather not be involved in their disagreement, and he shrinks back into his chair a little, taking another drink and relishing the warm blur of the alcohol on his senses. 

Jon scoffs. “Our guest is a monster.” Martin flinches, despite himself, and Jon’s eyes catch the movement - his gaze too sharp and too quick for Martin to evade it. A frown appears like a comma on Jon’s forehead, and smooths before Martin has had the chance to process it. “No offence, Martin.” 

Martin shrugs easily. “None taken.” Lonely people are excellent liars, in his experience. 

“Besides, you can hardly suggest we put a pin in this till Monday, Georgie. She’s buried alive in there. She has been for months. Another minute is too long, let alone a weekend.” Jon’s tone is venomous in his anger, and he sits forward as he speaks, scowling. 

Georgie purses her lips. “Have you forgotten that she tried to kill you?” 

Martin stares. Jon splutters. “So, what? She deserves to be tortured? You can’t be serious.” He’s raising his voice now. Georgie doesn’t flinch, and neither does the Admiral. Martin watches the cat, still sound asleep on Jon’s lap, and wonders how often these altercations tend to occur. 

“I’m not saying that, Jon,” Georgie says, stiffly. Martin lets himself fade a little against the chair, and wonders whether he should take himself away entirely. Georgie continues, “What I am saying is that two days won’t hurt her and could kill you.” 

“_SO WHAT _?” Jon roars. The Admiral springs up, jumping off Jon’s lap with his ears pressed back flat against his head. Georgie stares at Jon. Her sharp features are pinched and tense. Her lips tremble. She tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. 

“You don’t mean that.” She says it quietly, and even Martin can tell that she doesn’t believe it. Jon slumps back, folding from convex to concave as if all the air has been punched out of him. 

“Georgie, I -,” Jon’s voice is soft and hoarse, and his expression is beseeching. Martin looks away after a moment. There’s something too much like despair in Jon’s features, something that part of Martin hungers for, keenly. He pushes the hunger away. 

Georgie gets to her feet, and her eyes and smile are too bright when she turns to the chair where Martin had been sitting. Martin pulls himself back into reality, and Georgie doesn’t look particularly surprised. “Well, Martin, it’s been a pleasure, but I’m afraid I’ll have to excuse myself for the evening. Don’t hesitate to stay the night if you need to; we have an excellent spare room. Jon will show you around.”

“Georgie.” Jon’s voice is a little louder now and he raises his hand - as if to take hold of her skirt and make her stay, like a child with his mother. 

Georgie doesn’t look at him. Instead she dips a quick curtsey and says to Martin, “Gentlemen. Good night.” 

Then she walks out of the room. The Admiral follows close behind her. 

The silence returns. 

Jon’s voice breaks it, voice soft and bitter and hurting. “Damn it all.” His expression folds into too many well trodden lines of grief and pain and frustration, and just before Martin makes the decision to spare him being seen, Jon hides his face in his hands and curls forward, shoulders hunched. His back heaves with one breath, and then he uncurls, features far too smooth.

He turns to Martin, and his eyes are dark and deep and lovely. “This must be like heaven for you.” It’s not really a question. Jon sounds exhausted. 

Martin tenses. “Not really. No.” 

The part of him that wants to drink the loneliness out of Jon until there’s nothing left of him to care is almost bottomless. Fighting it feels like swaying on his tiptoes on the edge of an abyss, but Martin does it anyway, fingers pressing into the soft velvet armrests of his chair. 

Jon watches him, and in the firelight Martin almost imagines that he can see the scrap of his humanity fighting to push back the monster inside him. Then he puts his hands on his knees and gets to his feet, gesturing to the doorway. “It’s late. Would you like to stay the night?” 

Martin nearly laughs. It’s hard not to imagine how very badly he’d like Jon to have said that in a different context. As it is, he shakes his head and stands as well. “No, it’s alright, thank you.”

Jon frowns and looks outside. London is black beyond the window, so dark that Martin can barely make out the jagged geometry of the buildings against the sky. “It’s not safe.” 

Martin’s lips twitch. “From what? Monsters?” 

Jon’s lovely dark brow wrinkles like the broken spine of a well read book. “You’re not invulnerable, Martin.” His tone is almost reproachful.

Martin isn’t sure if it’s the brandy or the late hour that does it, but he steps closer to Jon and rests one hand on his arm, ignoring the way it hurts. Jon goes a little rigid, but he doesn’t pull away - just looks up into Martin’s face, curious and expectant and waiting. Martin doesn’t think it’s the monster that wants to lean down and kiss him, but he ignores the urge anyway. “I’m not human, Jon. I don’t need protecting.” 

Jon shakes his head a little, and then he reaches up, like a child with a butterfly, and rests one hand on Martin’s cheek. His touch is too hot, but Martin doesn’t pull back, too surprised to find the wits to move. Jon’s expression is fierce when he says, insistently, “You deserve a life safe from harm.” 

Martin doesn’t know what to say. So he flees. He lets himself disappear under Jon’s touch, and for one moment stays to watch Jon’s fingers curl and grasp the air, as if he could somehow pull him back. 

Martin tells himself he doesn’t run. (He does.) 

* * *

Gerry is late for work. This is unusual. In the two years that Martin has been working at The Observer, he doesn’t remember Gerry being late for work once. That includes the time that Gerry had tonsillitis, and when he came down with pneumonia. On both occasions, Martin had to all but carry the man to a hospital, despite his protestations. He has an unholy attachment to his work, despite the fact that he never seems to show much enthusiasm for it. Just a stubborn, persistent insistence on doing the work on time and well, if not happily.

He is a perfectionist. Perfectionists don’t tend to be late.

Martin tries not to worry about it. He doesn’t really succeed. Instead, he gets out his work. Since the sports reporter isn’t in today (his fault), he’s decided to get started on writing up the weekend cricket for him. Martin’s colleagues don’t so much thank him for starting their work when he’s in the office as look at him with expressions that get lost somewhere between fear and confusion. But Gerry appreciates it, and it makes Martin feel better, and besides, he’s still feeling guilty about Friday’s altercation.

That, and Martin doesn’t really have any stories to be working on. He was hired to cover the natural sciences: Jon’s story was unusual in that it was one of the few things Martin has written about recently that has very little to do with even a hypothesis of potential facts. But as it is, nothing new has come in over the weekend - and Martin had been working on the hope that Gerry would have arrived by the time he finished sorting the post.

Martin looks towards the windows, high up and narrow at the far ends of the room. Outside there’s only a bright white stillness. Inside isn’t much better. Things tend to get empty when he worries. So he needs to stop doing that.

He starts writing about cricket scores.

Gerry arrives at midday, furious. He storms into the office without hesitation, which Martin has always found both admirable and fascinating. Whatever background influence he exudes, Gerry seems to be largely immune to it. It’s a mystery that Martin has very deliberately decided not to look at too closely, and he thinks Gerry is as grateful for that as he is.

Gerry strides across the empty office, not looking the least bit surprised that the other eleven staff on his team have unanimously decided not to come into work. Instead, he slaps a thick envelope down onto Martin’s desk. Martin jumps and spills ink across his page. 

The anger falls out of Gerry like poison from a wound. “Damn. Sorry, Martin.” 

Martin shakes his head, too busy blotting the paper and trying to stop the ink from staining the green leather surface of his desk to look up and meet Gerry’s eyes. “No, no, it’s fine.” 

“Can I-?” Gerry hesitates. There are times when he seems much younger than a man who’s running a department at a prestigious London newspaper could possibly be. This is one of them, and it’s enough to make Martin look up and give Gerry a warm, reassuring smile. 

“No, it’s fine.” He takes in Gerry’s appearance: once again the man’s outfit is barely put together. His waistcoat is undone, as are his blazer and coat. His hair has come loose of its customary ponytail, and it doesn’t seem to have been washed in a few days. The skin around his knuckles is dry and red and chapped. Martin’s smile falls. “Not a restful weekend, then, I take it?” 

Gerry shrugs, all long limbs and a shirt that’s a little big for him. “It was fine.” 

Martin frowns, and tries not to look too much like he’s mothering. “You really should take better care of yourself, you know.” 

A muscle in the side of Gerry’s jaw jumps. “I will if you will.” Martin isn’t sure whether it’s meant to be a challenge or a joke. He sighs. 

“That’s fair.” 

Gerry jerks his chin at the envelope on Martin’s desk. The ink has spread across the thick, expensive paper like black blood. “Are you going to read it?” 

Martin blinks. “Now?” He’d been planning to fill in Gerry on the post, tell him how far he’d got with the cricket, and that he’d started births and marriages. They had a routine. This wasn’t part of it. 

Gerry’s long fingers tap against Martin’s desk in a quick, erratic pattern. “Might as well get it over with.” He doesn’t sound happy, and Martin frowns as he reaches for his letter opener.

“What is it?” 

Gerry shakes his head and bites the inside of his cheek, glaring at the wall. “You have to find out for yourself.” It’s a strange way of phrasing it, and unusual enough for Gerry not to answer the question. Martin tries to ignore the worry clawing at his lungs as he pulls out the letter. Beautiful, looping handwriting spills across the thick, expensive paper. 

“_Dear Mr Blackwood, _

_ I trust that Gerard has safely delivered this package and its contents into your care. _

_ I understand that you have expressed an interest in reporting on the fanciful antics of Jonathan Sims, and the organisation that calls itself Ghost Hunt UK. _

_ I am delighted to hear this. Forgive an old man his little pastimes, but I admit that I have been following this organisation’s activities for a while. _

_ They are an intriguing assortment of strays, and I think the public would enjoy their various misadventures as much as I have over the years. _

_ In particular, Sims is a promising character, and I trust you will pay close attention to any changes or developments in his person. I look forward to reading them most avidly. _

_ I have instructed Gerard to give you a sufficient budget and clear your schedule. For the foreseeable future, Mr. Blackwood, I expect you to report exclusively on the movements of Jonathan Sims and Ghost Hunt UK. _

_ I trust this arrangement will be to your liking, and eagerly await the first instalment. _

_ Yours, _

_ The Editor” _

There’s no name, and the letter is stamped with red ink and the newspaper’s crest, bordered by their motto: “_Videmus Omnia.” _

Martin rereads the letter, and then reads it a third time just to be sure he isn’t going completely mad. Then he looks at Gerry, who’s watching him with his lips pursed and one hand in his pocket. “I’m confused.” 

In the two years that Martin has worked at The Observer, he’s not heard from his editor. He hadn’t even met him when he got the job: it was Gerry who did the interview. The fact that he is hearing from him now, concerning a group of paranormal investigators no less, is...certainly eccentric. That, and then there’s the small matter of his claim that he’s been following their exploits for some time. Martin isn’t really sure what that’s supposed to mean, or if Jon, Georgie and Melanie are aware that they have a fan, but he can’t help but feel that if this has been the case then his editor might have mentioned it sooner. 

Gerry shrugs. “I mean, I haven’t actually read it. I’m assuming he’s telling you that you’ve got your column.” 

“And he’s a fan of Ghost Hunt UK?” Martin adds, not trying to hide his incredulity. 

Gerry laughs, quick and irritated. “Is that what he said?” On the street outside, a dog starts barking. Martin looks up at Gerry and he doesn’t look well.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” There’s something he’s missing. The feeling isn’t uncommon, but it’s irritating now. Martin can’t help but feel it’s important. More than important. Dangerous. 

But Gerry shakes his head, and his dark, clever eyes are suddenly sharp as he glances at the empty doorway. He takes his hands out of his pockets. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” 

Martin suddenly has the very distinct impression that he’s being watched. His skin crawls with it, and he touches the back of his neck, as if covering it will somehow make the prickling sensation go away. He doesn’t turn around. There’s a wall behind him and he knows it’s impossible that anything or anyone could be there, watching him. He can’t shake the feeling though. 

Fear spills out of Gerry, rich and stark as blood in the water. Martin tries to gather his thoughts, but it’s almost impossible in the face of the unadulterated terror rolling off Gerry in waves. “G-Gerry? Are you alright?” Martin is holding his breath. It’s not how this works, but he’s half convinced that if he can’t smell the fear then it won’t be so tempting. 

Gerry stumbles back from the desk, and waves him off. “I’m fine, Martin. Go find your Lazarus. I’m sure he has more need of you than I do, and my reporters have to do their jobs at some point.” 

Martin isn’t sure if he’s referring to him or the others. It’s hard to think clearly, because there’s still fear bleeding out of Gerry into the air and there’s still the sense of being watched and Martin’s head is swimming. “I...Alright.” 

He gets to his feet and knocks something over, but he can’t see what it is. Fog is starting to creep under the walls, crawling across the floor towards Gerry’s desk where he’s got a bottle of whiskey from his drawer and is pouring himself a glass with shaking hands. The fog is white and thick and silent and Martin can feel it pulling at him, singing a song that only he can hear. It sounds like a lullaby. 

Gerry’s fear is spreading to fill the room and something is watching them but Martin doesn’t know what it is and the part of him that’s a monster really doesn’t care about being seen as long as it gets to be fed. 

Martin’s not sure when he pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and he’s really not sure how he’ll explain it to Gerry if he asks about it, but Gerry is ignoring him and it’s doing enough to help him at least pretend to push away the desperate, endless hunger inside him for long enough that he can grab his briefcase and his coat and leave the office. It’s only when he gets to the front door that Martin realises he left the letter on his desk, but he can feel Gerry’s fear through three feet of masonry and he needs to put more distance between them, so instead of heading back he barrels outside and into the street. 

It really should be busy at a time like this, but Martin’s control is slipping and between one step and the next the street strobes between noise and silence. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going or how long he’s been walking for when he bumps into someone, and it’s shocking enough that anyone could see him, let alone touch him, that Martin is thrown back into his body and his sanity with a confusing thump, already mumbling apologies. “- Sorry, sorry, wasn’t watching where I was going, I just -,” Martin stops. Because it’s at this point that he takes in the man in front of him and realises that he recognises him. “I, what, _ Jon _?” 

Jonathan Sims stares up at him, looking neither surprised nor confused. Martin envies his composure. “Martin.” Jon’s gaze falls to the handkerchief Martin still has pressed to his mouth. “Are you quite well? 

Martin lowers the handkerchief, blushing, and tucks it back into his pocket. “No - yes, no, I’m fine, thank you.” 

Jon nods once, short and to the point. “Good, well, I thought I might find you here.”

Martin frowns, taking in his bearings. There’s the thick brackish smell of the Thames in the air, and over that, the stink of fish guts. Not far away, he can hear the clattering echo of the docks. The two of them are standing fifty feet away from a bridge, and the buildings around them are brown and filthy. Seagulls shout overhead in a bright grey sky. “In Deptford?” 

Jon steps to the side as a woman walks past them, her shawl wrapped right around her head to keep out the cold. “Yes.” He seems annoyed. Martin’s still working through his own incredulity. 

“I neither live nor work here.” And there aren’t any academies of note nearby, either. You can hardly count the naval training college in New Cross. Even if Jon had looked into his work, there was no reason to expect a science reporter to be anywhere near the docks in south-east London. Maybe if there had been some unusual fishing news, but there hasn’t been and Martin is pretty sure there isn’t going to be. 

Jon’s jaw is tense and he doesn’t look at Martin when he replies, with a stiff shrug, “it’s a small world.”

Martin stares. “It really isn’t.” 

“This is irrelevant. It’s past midday and we’re losing daylight. I’ve found you now, so you can either come with me or you can stay here doing….What is it you were doing here, exactly?” 

Martin tries to come up with a plausible lie and can’t, so instead he tells the truth. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Jon’s lips quirk in half a smile. “You’re a very odd man.”

Martin raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re either profoundly lacking in self-awareness or convinced that I’m much stranger than I am, relatively speaking.”

There’s a distant, resounding clang from the machinery in the dockyard, and Jon’s gaze shifts in its direction for a fraction of a second before flickering back to Martin, glittering with amusement. “Relative to what, exactly?”

“Well, to you, for starters.” 

Jon snorts, and Martin doesn’t try to fight the smile that rises in response as natural as a heartbeat. “A line of academic inquiry to which we must return at a later date. However, for now I really would like to get off the street. It is rather bitter out here.” As Jon speaks, a gust of wind howls down the street and over the bridge, ruffling the low tide of the river and pulling at Jon’s clothes and hair. Martin lets himself enjoy the sting of it, then nods, and resigns himself to whatever nonsense Jon will drag him into today. 

“Where are you going?” 

Jon gives him a smile this time, quick and shy and grateful, and Martin tries to ignore the way something in his chest flutters, hot and burning against his rib cage like tickling licks of flame. “I need to tell Basira about Daisy. I have no idea how she’s going to take the news so some company would be appreciated.”

Martin steps closer, and tries not to be too irrationally gratified when Jon doesn’t step away. He moves so that his body is acting as something of a windbreaker, letting the wind split over his back like water in a stream. “So you’re asking me for moral support? Should I remind you that I’m a monster?” 

Jon rolls his eyes. He’s pulled his coat tight around his slender chest, and is all but huddling against the cold. “Let’s not have that argument again. Are you coming?” 

“I’m starting to think I should be charging you for this. I do have an actual job, you know.” Martin decides he’ll tell Jon about the column later, a favour or two down the line. 

Jon just glares at him. “Is that a yes?” 

Martin doesn’t cower. He thinks perhaps four years ago he would have done, and he’s almost glad he didn’t meet Jon then (though it would’ve been nice, to know him when things were different. When he could have touched him without fear of burning.) 

Instead he says, “Lead the way. I’ll follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I had never met anyone like Georgie Barker, though in truth I had met few other avatars and none that were End-touched. It was a matter of some relief, as the decisions that had led me to become what I was were in no small part informed by my own fear of death. I suppose if we have anything in common, as a species, it is that. Or curiosity, perhaps, and that was all I really thought it was when my Editor asked me to follow your movements more closely. Then again, my lack of curiosity led us here. I did not know his name, and I had not thought to ask._


	9. The Observant Detective

Martin has worked in several different occupations over the course of his relatively short life. He’d been a porter, and a costermonger, a street sweeper and a dock worker when there was work to be had in the yards. For a particularly miserable year he’d been forced to work as a mudlark, trudging waist deep through the Thames trying to find scrap worth selling. His job at The Observer was the first one that had allowed him to put his mind to work instead of his body, and he was still not entirely sure how he’d managed to bluff his way into it.

But he’s still a big man, and not a stranger to manual labour: so he recognises a face or two in the meat markets and street stalls of Deptford. In response, he ducks behind Jon and lets himself fade a little into the background. Jon doesn’t falter, marching on with an assurance Martin neither shares nor understands. The bitter wind carries them erratic scraps of sound, hawkers and hammers, cats and dogs and seagulls. 

It’s loud and abrasive and, for Martin, familiar. He dodges around blood trickling through the muddy street with practiced ease, and watches a little ruefully as Jon ruins the cuffs of his own trousers, clearly unused to such lowly surroundings. Martin will grant Jon this much, though, he’s making a good effort of not showing his discomfort. Martin and his - well, he didn’t have friends - his neighbours, had seen more than enough well dressed merchant gentlemen come to pay their fisheries or cartwrights or shipbuilders a visit, only to hurriedly make their excuses with a handkerchief pressed to their green faces when they got too close to the butchers’ stalls. Jon expresses no such discomfort, pressing on with a single minded intent that suggests he knows where he’s going. Martin wonders what brought him here before. 

Before long, they’ve found their way to a grotty looking pub that calls itself The Admiral’s Arms. The wood front is almost black with soot, and the door frame is spattered light brown and faded orange with mud and other things. As they approach, a dog takes a piss on the flagstones. Jon wrinkles his nose, and the stray trots away, back in the direction of the butchers and gutter girls. 

“Not a dog person?” Martin asks, conversationally, letting himself fade a little further back into reality. 

Jon shakes his head, not turning as he raises one hand and puts it on the heavy wooden door. “Not really, no.” He hesitates, and this time turns back to Martin, as if the question is in any way important. “You?”

Martin considers his answer, carefully ignoring the smell of the street. “I used to be.”

Jon nods as if that makes sense, and pushes the door open. Beyond them is a dark, dimly lit cavern that stinks of beer and damp wood. He walks inside without checking to see whether Martin is behind him. Martin follows, carefully pushing the door shut against the bitter wind and waiting for his eyes to adjust. 

Candles in iron frames sit at irregular intervals from the walls, crusted in dripping wax. They flicker against the rough plaster, making pools of flickering yellow light against the otherwise brown air of the room. Too many tables crowd the space, and Jon has to step sideways to squeeze through between benches and mismatched sets of wooden stools. Martin has no such luxury, and relaxes into the embrace of the Lonely to push through the furniture without exposing himself to too much humiliation. A few patrons jump as the furniture shoves itself aside, apparently of its own accord. But it doesn’t take them long to go back to nursing their ale, and gin in the case of one or two haggard looking women - fingers calloused from the workhouses.

Jon leads them straight across the bar and into a dark corner. This is the type of corner that, three years ago, Martin would have avoided at all costs. It is a corner for pickpocketing and illicit transactions, solicitation and the occasional stab wound. It is not the kind of corner into which an ordinary person ventures lightly.

Jon pulls up a stool, and gestures for Martin to do the same. 

Martin reminds himself that he’s a monster and shyly grabs a stool from a mostly empty table. He’s far too big for the thing, and when he sits down his knees come up past his stomach. But the only other seats around are the long benches, and Martin thinks he’d feel worse standing whilst Jon sat. So he stays where he is and frowns at Jon. “So what are we here for, again?” 

A hand springs forward from the shadows and stabs a vicious looking knife deep into the soft, wrinkled wood of the table in front of them. Martin jumps so hard he nearly knocks himself off balance. Jon doesn’t flinch. Instead he nods, as a beautiful woman with dark glittering eyes and a deep red hijab over her head leans forward, lips pursed. “Basira.”

Basira doesn’t take her eyes off Jon. “Prove to me that you’re the real Jonathan Sims.” 

Jon takes a deep breath, his narrow shoulders tense. Behind them, the noise of the bar is a low burble. From the kitchen comes the smell of boiled meat and eggs. Jon leans forward, ignoring the knife directly in front of his chest. “When I was eight years old, I read a book about a spider.” 

Basira runs her eyes over Jon’s face for a moment, smooth features giving nothing away, half hidden by the shadows. After a moment longer, she relaxes. She’s a lithe woman, but there are rolling lines of muscle down her arms that speak to manual labour or something more sinister, judging by the knife. Martin isn’t sure what she would have done to them if she hadn’t liked Jon’s answer, but he’s fairly sure it would have hurt. 

“So part of you’s still him, then.” She laughs, and it’s bitter and angry and sad, bleeding loneliness into the air like a cold draught. Her smile is bright in the low light. “I can’t decide whether that’s better or worse.”

“Basira, I…,” Jon hesitates, his hand hovering between them as if he’d planned to reach out and take hers. Instead he rests it in his lap, and wrings his hands together out of her sight under the table. “I’m still me.”

Basira scoffs. “No you’re not.”

A flicker of anger appears on Jon’s face, the candlelight catching the shadow of his frown. “Yes I -,”

Basira interrupts him. “No, you’re not. Come on Jon. No one falls asleep for six months without a heartbeat and wakes back up still human. Use that big head of yours for something other than your pride for once.” Jon flinches and Martin frowns, but Basira continues, quiet and vicious with barely suppressed grief. “Whatever scrap of soul you had in that skinny chest? It’s long gone. Now it’s just a waiting game until you stop remembering to pretend like you’re a real person.” Jon opens his mouth, and shuts it. He’s twisting his own fingers so hard his dark skin is white with it. Martin’s frown deepens. 

“It doesn’t work like that, actually.” He says, politely. Basira whips her head around to look at him, a breath of confusion marring her forehead before she eases it, tense again and defensive. She wraps her fingers around the knife in the table and pulls it out of the stained wood. She doesn’t threaten him, but she makes it very clear that she could do if she so chose. Martin does not touch the fog that lingers, constantly, just behind the back of his thoughts. Instead he gives her a friendly smile and half a wave. Basira scowls.

“Who the Hell are you?” 

Jon looks surprised, and pulls his hands out of his lap to gesture at Martin’s chest. “Right, sorry, Basira Hussain, this is Martin Blackwood. Martin, Basira.”

Martin inclines his head, politely. “Pleasure to meet you Ms Hussain.” 

Basira nods back, business like and openly impatient. “And you Mr Blackwood.” She turns to Jon. “Is he a monster?” 

Jon says, “No.”

Martin says, “Yes.”

Both Basira and Martin raise their eyebrows at Jon, who goes red and throws up his hands. “I mean, yes, he’s..._ spooky _, but he’s not a problem. He’s rather kind, actually.” The way Jon says it is matter of fact, but something in Martin’s chest softens and then burns, bright and painful. He isn’t conscious of raising his hand to his heart, but Jon’s eyes follow the movement and Martin is watching Jon. He lowers his hand quickly, and looks away from Jon to the table. Jon mumbles as he finishes. “He’s saved my life once already this past week alone.” 

“Monsters save monsters,” Basira says, hard and flippant and challenging. “Or,” She tosses her knife from one hand to another, “He’s saving you for a special occasion. You know, the way the aristocracy save a good vintage.” 

Jon scowls, fingers curling into a loose fist on the table. Martin decides to interject before they fall off track again. “That’s really not how it works.” 

Basira stops playing with the knife and lifts her chin, glaring at him. “Enlighten me.” 

Martin shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck. He has the vague sense he’s being watched, and he glances over his shoulder to quickly scan the bar’s other patrons before turning back to the table. Basira watches him suspiciously, palm of her hand resting on the hilt of her knife. 

“We don’t stop being human when we...find a patron. I mean. It’s harder to kill us, or hurt us, and we get these abilities - so I guess in that way we’re probably less human, but…” 

The flare of Basira’s nostrils is the only outward indication of her annoyance. That, and the tiny shavings of wood she’s scraping from the table as she twists her knife into it. Martin clears his throat and continues, suddenly very aware that Jon is giving him all of his attention, body slightly tilted in his direction. 

“R-right, but we’re still people. Because. Because we, we feed, and that’s probably the most monstrous thing we do. Trapping people and hurting them and killing them. To make them scared. But, the foundation of that is, well, us.” Martin tugs at his hair. “Every, avatar or follower or bonded person. They’re scared of what they serve. Maybe they find power in that fear - like the Vast, or the Lightless Flame. But fundamentally they’re scared. That’s how you, you know, feed your god. So it wants you human. Because if you forgot how to be a person then you’d forget how to be afraid. Which kind of defeats the point.” 

Both Basira and Jon take a moment to process that. Martin resists the urge to hide his face in his hands, and strongly considers whether it’s worth getting a beer - and if so how much Jon would judge him for drinking at three o’clock in the afternoon. Jon breaks the silence between them. “I’ve met one...avatar, which was very much not human. Apart from Nikola, but I think it’s fair to say she’s an exception. And, if anything, wanted to be a person. But this one - it didn’t want me to use names or to think of it as a person at all. It felt quite strongly on the subject.” 

“Oh, you mean The Twisting Deceit?” Martin asks, mostly relieved to have a distraction from his own anxiety. He watches Jon process the name, and the pleasure that appears briefly in his eyes as he comprehends Martin’s meaning. It makes Martin want to tell him everything, which is a rather dangerous impulse. Martin pulls on the fog inside him and lets it numb the edges of his mind. 

Jon nods. “It called itself It Is Not What It Is. But I think they’re the same?” 

“Yeah. Well, that one’s easy. The point of The Spiral is fear of madness. You’re not supposed to know. They’re not supposed to know. I mean it’s not a hard and fast rule. I just know that Forsaken prefers me as I am because as long as I’m still at least half a person I’m,” Martin hesitates. Because for some reason, stupidly, even after all this time, he still doesn’t really like to say it. 

Jon finishes for him, quietly. “Because you’re lonely.” 

Martin shrugs and nods, throat suddenly thick with something that feels too much like grief. He pulls a little more desperately on the fog, but it resists him. Of course. Forsaken likes it when he’s hurting like this. 

That’s the point. 

“Not that it hasn’t been a pleasure, gentlemen, but, well, it hasn’t. And if that’s all, I’ve got better things to do.” Basira gets to her feet. She’s tall, taller than Martin had expected, and in better light he can see that her dress is made of thick, coarse cloth, tightly tailored to her body. Martin imagines it’s about as close as she could get to wearing a coattail and trousers without being indecent. She slips the knife into her skirts with a flash of steel, and starts to move past their table.

Jon gets to his feet, knocking over his stool with a clatter. Martin cringes. This really isn’t the kind of place where it’s a good idea to draw attention. Without thinking about it, he encourages the bar’s patrons not to care. 

Jon, meanwhile, raises his hands as if to stop Basira and then lowers them when she looks down at him, lips pursed tight. “Daisy’s alive.”

Basira’s body tenses as if she’s been shot through with electricity. One of her hands moves to her skirts. “What did you just say?” Her voice is very quiet. 

Jon doesn’t back down. “Daisy’s alive.” Basira waits, and he continues. “She’s trapped, but she’s alive.” 

“Where?” The word sounds like it’s holding back a reservoir, tense under the strain of everything Basira isn’t saying. 

Jon swallows. “Ghost Hunt UK.” Basira pushes past him, and this time Jon catches her elbow. “Basira, she’s not...It’s not that simple.”

“Then explain it to me Jon.” Basira voice is level, and quiet, but she snarls the words between clenched teeth and makes no effort to hide it. 

Jon’s shoulders hunch. “Th-there was a coffin. There is a coffin. It’s not normal. I think it’s the domain of, ah,” He looks at Martin, and Martin tries to ignore the jump in his chest when he does so. 

“Too close I cannot breathe.” Martin turns to Basira, who is standing at nearly six feet of muscle and anger and poorly masked grief. “If you go in there unprotected you’ll never get out. I’m not sure you could escape if you did have a plan. No one’s done it before that I know of.” 

Some of the tension in Basira’s broad shoulders loosens, and it looks more like defeat than acceptance. Jon’s expression softens. “I have a plan.” He gestures at their shadow drenched table. “Please sit down. We can talk it through. We can get her back. Together.”

Basira’s expression twists, wrung with pain and loss for one vivid moment before she deliberately smooths it away. “No, Jon. I’ll get her back.” She pauses and collects herself, and gives Jon a quick, polite, close-lipped smile. “See you around.”

Then she reaches out, too fast to easily follow, and briskly brushes Martin’s shoulder. Martin’s still partway through his flinch when Basira draws back, and shrugs when he looks at her. “There was a spider.” 

Martin blinks. “Thank you?” 

“Don’t mention it.” Basira turns back to Jon. “Don’t follow me.” 

Jon hesitates, and Basira stares down at him, all dark eyes and muscle and carefully controlled anger. Jon breathes out as he gives in. “I - alright. But. Tell me, if you need help? Tell us?” 

Basira blinks, and just for a moment her eyes glitter a little more brightly in the candlelight. Then she takes a deep breath through her nose and shakes her head, clapping Jon’s shoulder the way that soldiers do. She squeezes, once, and then moves away. “Goodbye Jon. Good luck.” 

Basira leaves, and loneliness swallows Jon like deep still water in winter. For too long, Jon says nothing, watching Basira as she leaves and then watching the space where she had been. The loneliness deepens. Jon’s expression and his body are very still, except that he wrings his hands. Martin watches him, for a moment, and then he ignores everything that he is and steps into the loneliness surrounding Jon and breaks it. 

Martin doesn’t touch Jon, but he moves into his line of sight and gives him a gentle smile. “May I buy you a drink?” 

Jon softens, and the ice melts, and Martin thinks of Gerry Keay and all the times he hasn’t done this before and feels suddenly, terribly selfish. 

But then Jon runs a hand through his hair, and shakes himself, pulling himself up to his rather inconsiderable height. “Thank you, Martin, but no. We have one more errand to do today.” He looks across the bar to the narrow, filthy windows. “And the light is getting low. Shall we?”

* * *

The sky is a bright grey blue when they step out into the early evening, scraped clean of its clouds by the wind. It’s a little warmer, but Jon steps into the shelter of Martin’s body anyway. Martin makes a conscious decision not to step away, and wonders how many choices past the point of no return he’s gone already. 

Jon starts to walk, gesturing a little in the direction he’s heading. As he does, he squints up at Martin. “Can I ask you a question?” 

Martin suspects that this is a dangerous request. So he slips his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “Sure, if you agree to answer one of mine.” 

Jon nods, as if Martin has just presented him with some serious arrangement. “That’s very reasonable.”

For a moment, Martin can almost imagine the child Jon might have been: over serious and too old for his years. It makes Martin’s heart ache, and he steps a little closer to Jon as a group of dockworkers shoulder past them, exhausted and drenched with sweat. 

“Back there - there were still people in that bar.” Jon starts, weaving past a woman carrying a half empty basket of wilting daffodils. Martin makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, and Jon frowns. “Why?” 

Martin shrugs, glancing across the street and carefully avoiding a dirty looking dog chained to a lamp post. “It’s Monday and people round here work too hard and too late?” 

“Yes but you were there.” Jon says, quick in his impatience. “And you didn’t have an…,” He wiggles his fingers, “an _ effect.” _

_ “ _Oh.” 

Oh. Martin hadn’t really considered that. He’d been too preoccupied by Basira, and Jon, and the memories he thought he’d buried in fog two years ago. But Jon was right. That was. Certainly odd. Martin scratches the back of his neck, staring at the threads of purple creeping across the sky in anticipation of the sunset. “I’m not sure. It might be that something cancelled it out? That can happen, sometimes.” He pauses. “Not often, though. Normally it’s a matter of relative power. Like. If I wasn’t the most powerful,” Martin tries to find the right word and settles on, “thing,” (Jon wrinkles his nose, Martin shrugs helplessly at him), “in the room then my sort of, latent abilities wouldn’t take precedent.” 

He takes a breath. Both Martin and Jon have stopped in the middle of the street. To Jon’s left is an unpromising alleyway. In front of them is a dead end. Jon is giving him his full attention, and Martin finds himself at once wanting to hide and to give him everything. Which - Martin holds up a finger, as if to catch the idea in the air. He tilts his head down at Jon. “It could’ve been you, actually.” 

Jon startles. “Me?” He says the word as if Martin has suggested something utterly preposterous, and he says it loudly enough that a bored looking man sitting on a nearby wall looks up from rolling his cigarette. Fog creeps up towards his hanging feet over the bricks, and the man shrugs and spits onto the pavement before getting out a box of matches and lighting the thing. The scent of tobacco drifts down the street. Jon’s fingers flex and curl at his side. 

Martin keeps his hands in his pockets and turns to face Jon. He’s bracing himself, and he’s not really sure why. “Actually, that leads rather nicely onto my question. Who do you serve, Jon?” He asks it as kindly as he can, but he thinks both of them are aware of the danger that quite suddenly makes itself known in the air between them, naked as a razor. 

The skin on the back of Martin’s neck prickles. He resists the urge to look over his shoulder. He can't shake the sense he's being watched.

Jon’s shoulders are somewhere near his ears when he replies, and as he does so he looks away. His face is hung in lines of fatigue and shadow, and he looks both far, far too old and painfully young. “I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I grew up in Deptford. It was a miserable, filthy place, though I am not sure how much of my own bitter experience has informed my opinion of it. There were and are good people there, certainly. But it is also a sharper part of the city than some of the others. You were not meant to walk its muddy streets, and though your friend had built herself better camouflage, it was clear that she wasn’t either. Too clever, too confident, too well spoken. She had not yet learned to keep her head low, though she had certainly known pain enough to teach it. _


	10. The Curious Case of Mr Hopworth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with fanart from the amazing [here](https://illusion-of-sea-axes.tumblr.com/), please share it and spread the love!

“Really? You have absolutely no idea what power you serve?” Martin is struggling to control his incredulity, and is worried he’s being terribly rude as a result. It doesn’t stop him from continuing. “How does that even happen?”

“I don’t know!” Jon throws his hands into the air, and then glances nervously over his shoulder to the man on the wall with a cigarette. He lifts one hand, as if to take Martin’s arm, and then lowers it, jerking his head to the side instead. “Come on.” 

Martin glowers at the miserable, narrow alleyway as he follows. A mangy brown tabby cat yowls as it trots away from them. The dead bird in its mouth drops a trail of grey feathers. Jon stops twenty feet down the alley, at a point equidistant between the street they’d left and another on the other side. He’s standing over a manhole cover. Martin purses his lips. 

“You don’t have any theories? Forgive me for saying so, but based on the short time I’ve known you Jon, I find that hard to believe.” Martin keeps his hands firmly in his pockets, and makes no movement to come closer to the manhole cover. 

Jon chews the inside of his cheek, glancing left and right. Martin isn’t sure whether he’s worried about the regular perils of walking down a dark alleyway as evening falls in a dangerous part of London, or if he’s more concerned about being spotted by less mundane parties. 

“It’s something to do with seeing.” 

Martin blinks. Something like a thread pulls, very gently, at the back of his head. “Seeing?”

Jon scratches his chin, and nods. He taps his thigh with his other hand. “Seeing, knowing, investigation. Asking questions, I think.” He pauses, swallows, and looks up at Martin. “Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

Martin considers it. “I haven’t, but I don’t know every Entity. I’m afraid I, ah, chose to forgo my education on the subject.” He gives Jon an awkward smile, and half hopes he’ll assume he’s joking. Jon’s mouth turns down, and he stops tapping his thigh. 

“Which do you know?”

Martin counts them off on his fingers. “Well, the Forsaken, obviously. Too Close I Cannot Breathe, I Do Not Know You, It Is Not What It Is, the Lightless Flame, Filth, Flesh, the Dark, the Vast and ah, Terminus, of course. The End.” Jon was counting with him, and he lets out a quick breath when he finishes. 

“Right. We know of the Hunt and the Slaughter as well.” He waves Martin off when he tilts his head. “There was an incident with a ghost, Melanie and a bullet wound. It’s. Mostly dealt with.” Then Jon frowns, checking up and down the alley again. His paranoia is infectious, and Martin finds himself looking too, searching for any prying eyes. None make themselves apparent, and Jon clicks his tongue. “So that makes twelve. How very biblical.”

Martin snorts. “Hardly.” At Jon’s raised eyebrow, he elaborates. “Infernal, more like, and besides these - the entities defy both rhyme and reason. They’re not so simple as to be trapped by something as human as language.” 

The rude squawking of seagulls fills the silence. Jon hums, thoughtfully. “Well put.” 

Martin wishes his monsterhood would let him suppress the blush that rushes to his cheeks, but as it is he blushes anyway and tilts his head, half hoping that his hair will hide his cheeks where it hangs a little loose from his ponytail. 

Then Jon claps his hands, and Martin jumps. Jon frowns. “Sorry. But we really should be getting on.” He checks up and down the alley again. 

Martin knows the answer to his next question, but he’ll be damned a second time if he won’t make Jon admit it. “Getting where?” 

Jon has the good grace to look a little embarrassed. His brown leather shoes are crusted in drying mud, and he nudges the manhole cover with his toe as he points. “There.” 

Martin stares at him, straight-faced and unimpressed. “Into the sewer. Why do you want to go into a sewer Jon?” 

Jon throws up his hands, looking up and down the alley again. “I’d really prefer not to argue about this, Martin. He’ll be gone by nightfall, we don’t have as much time as I thought we did.”

“I’m not arguing,” Martin replies, patiently. His feet remain rooted to the spot, next to a mouldering pile of abandoned newspapers still tied with brown string, and a vicious looking rusted nail. “Who do you want to talk to in the sewer?” He meets Jon’s eyes calmly when he adds, “or should I ask _ what _ do you want to talk to in the sewer?” 

“Who is much more polite,” Jon mutters under his breath, shifting his weight uneasily from one leg to another. Martin decides not to grace that with a reply, and waits patiently instead for Jon to elaborate. Jon looks at him furtively from beneath the dark mess of his eyebrows. “His name is Jared Hopworth.” Martin is not quite quick enough to catch the huff of incredulity that is coughed out of him at the name. 

“No.” He turns and starts walking back down the alley towards the street they’d come from. “Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

“Martin, Martin, wait! I have a plan.” Rubbish skitters and rattles through the mud as Jon marches after him. 

Martin barks a short, exasperated laugh and stops, turning to look down at Jon, whose face is pinched with impatience. “I’m sure you do. And I’ll have no part of it. I should’ve listened to Gerry.” He adds the last sentence as an afterthought, too used to the comfort of his own company to consider unwanted observers. 

Jon’s impatience wavers. “Wait, who’s Gerry?” 

Martin waves him off. “My colleague.”

“At the newspaper? Why would he be talking about me? And what reason could he possibly have -?”

Martin cuts across Jon, unsure of where to start with his explanations and unwilling to try and explain regardless. “Anyway, shall we be getting back? I’ll walk you home. This isn’t a safe neighbourhood after dark, especially not for people like you.”

Martin’s pretty sure Jon doesn’t realise he puffs out his chest, but he does. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Martin gives him a gentler smile than he has since they confronted the issue of the manhole cover. “Some of us were born to lower families than yours, Jon.” 

Jon frowns in surprise. “And you’re one of them?” 

Martin chuckles, mostly bitter and a little self deprecating. “Are my airs and graces so convincing?” He straightens up before Jon can answer, and beckons him to follow. “Come on. Ms Barker will be worried.” 

A light wind draws with it the silt-ridden stench of the Thames, and Jon shivers a little. But he doesn’t move. Instead, something in him tenses, and his posture changes, just a little, as if he’s bracing for Martin to tackle him. 

“She will. But I’m sorry, Martin, I’m not going anywhere. I should have given you fair warning and for that I’m sorry, but I have to do this. If there’s even the slightest chance that I can bring Daisy back, then I am bound by my honour and, well, the strength of my heart, to try and achieve it. No matter what monsters may come.” Jon looks up, and his jaw is firm and his shoulders are low, his hair rippling like dark waves in the wind. Martin thinks he looks terribly brave, standing there against the litter and the dirty grey sky. He also thinks that he looks terribly doomed. “If you have to leave then I understand. But I will go, whether or not you’re with me.” For just one moment, Jon’s resolve cracks. He tilts his head with a nervous smile and flexes his fingers. “Though I must admit, I’d rather not do it alone.”

Another wind rushes down the alley, and it pulls against Jon’s collar and sleeves. Martin feels it skim over his neck like silk, too numb to the cold. He purses his lips. “I barely know you.” Jon nods. Martin bites the inside of his cheek. “That spider monster was a one time thing.” Jon watches him and waits. “I left this life. I chose to give it up.” Martin clenches his teeth and draws up his emotions as if he’s pulling blood from a stone. “I never wanted any of this.” 

Jon swallows, and when the silence stretches he nods and steps forward, holding out his hand. He looks sincere when he meets Martin’s eyes, and unendingly gentle. “In that case, Mr Blackwood, it’s been a pleasure.”

Martin takes Jon’s hand. It burns him, but he doesn’t pull back. Instead he squeezes, and Jon does the same, long fingers a comforting brace around Martin’s hand. Martin lets go, and dips a quick bow, and pulls the fog inside of him. It answers too easily. “It has, Jon.”

Jon gives him a quick, curt nod. Martin lets the numb fog of solitude weave its way through his brain. It’s what lets him turn around and walk away. He doesn’t look back. 

The fog burns through his mind and his limbs, sweet and soft and cool, numbing the burning ache of his heart and soothing the itching heat in his skin. It feels easy. It feels right. It would be so simple to fall into that great, cool white ocean and never resurface. Martin wants to. He often had, even before he met Peter Lukas, though he didn’t know what he was doing at the time.

The clatter of the manhole cover cuts through Martin’s mind like nails on a blackboard. As if from a great distance, he hears Jon curse quietly under his breath. 

Martin turns around and walks back down the alley, away from the street and the world outside.

Jon is standing over the now open passage down into the tunnels. The ladder that should take them below is stained with rust and something green. It disappears into darkness, but Jon already has an oil lamp in his hand and is struggling to light it. 

Martin sighs, and takes the matches out of Jon’s hand, striking one quickly and dipping it into the brass belly of the lamp. Jon startles, stubs his toe on the manhole cover and curses again, louder this time. When he’s finished hopping, Martin holds out the lamp, trying to contain the hint of laughter that is finding its way through the receding numbness in his chest. Jon glares at him and takes it.

“I thought you were leaving.” 

Martin shrugs. He can’t even take it as the insult it could have been. He thinks that’s probably a sign that he’s too far gone. “You’d die without me.”

Jon laughs, and it’s a little too high and too slow to be anything like sincere. “Would I?” 

Martin purses his lips. “We can still die, Jon. Everything can die.” He stops. Jon is still, and quiet, watching him carefully. Listening. Martin clears his throat. “And I’d prefer it if you weren’t grievously injured, either.” 

Jon shrugs, and his chuckle his time is quiet and low and much more honest. “I can make no promises.” 

Martin clicks his tongue and doesn’t answer. Instead, he steps forward and holds his hand out for the oil lamp. “I’ll go first.” His tone leaves no room for disagreement. Years of caring for a sick and stubborn mother means that he’s got it down to an art. 

Jon opens his mouth, shuts it, huffs and holds out the lamp. Martin takes it with a smile and glares at the open sewer when he thinks Jon isn’t looking, thinking longingly of his office and the lovely cafe nearby. “Right then.” 

It’s awkward, climbing with the lamp in one hand. The ladder is uneven, and it creaks and groans as it takes Martin’s weight. The metal is peeling with rust, and it means the cool bars scratch his skin as he climbs. Daylight falls in a bright white column down the length of the ladder, but as Martin gets deeper he can see more and more of the tunnels not illuminated by the little sunlight falling through the open hole above him. 

Another side effect of getting deeper into the tunnel is the rising smell, silt and excrement, rotting food and wet stone. Martin wrinkles his nose, and decides that he’ll be genuinely annoyed with Jon if he doesn’t have a damn good reason for them to be down here. He gets to the ground, and steps onto the red brick ledge that banks the river of sewage flowing slow and dark through the tunnel. His lamplight flickers over the sludge, glittering against floating lumps and eddies in the current. 

Martin tilts his head back and calls up to Jon, not raising his voice too loudly in case there’s anything down here that’s listening. “It’s safe!” It’s only when Martin looks up at the bright white penny-shaped window of light he’d left behind that he notices that Jon is already on his way down into the tunnel. Martin decides not to waste time being annoyed about it.

It doesn’t take long for Jon to get down the ladder, a little breathless. He wipes his palms on his jacket, and Martin tries not to smile at the futility of the gesture. They’re both going to look a mess by the time they leave here, and Martin suspects he’ll be trying to exorcise the smell for a week. He holds up the lamp, and the candle flame brushes Jon’s brown skin as gold as sunlight. “So? Where to?”

Jon wrinkles his nose. There’s a pinch of a frown between his eyebrows, and he glances left and right before nodding to himself and setting off down the tunnel. “This way.” Martin follows.

They’ve been walking for about 20 minutes when Martin feels the air shift. It’s not obvious at first. There’s the lingering copper and salt smell of blood in the water, but Deptford has an active meat market and this is hardly surprising in its sewers. The increasing concentration of viscera, glistening on the slow river, is not obvious at first. There’s not much to tell bone from wood when it’s stained green-brown by filth, after all. But after some time, it gets difficult to ignore the fact that the river is pink with blood and flesh, and that the tunnels have begun to stink like an abattoir. It’s this that makes Martin give in and press his handkerchief to his mouth. Excrement and vomit he can bear: illness is rarely glamorous and he’d cared for an ailing mother for almost as long as he can remember. But he’s never been a fan of blood, and becoming a monster hasn’t changed that. 

Ahead of him, Jon notices the change as well. He doesn’t get out his handkerchief though. Instead, he comes to a stop - soft footsteps loud in the empty tunnel - and raises his head, peering up at the brick arches of the roof. “I know you’re watching us.” Jon’s voice bounces in circles around the tunnel, echoing into the distant shadows. 

Something massive shifts by the wall, some fifteen feet ahead of them. Martin tenses, and white fog seeps slowly over the bricks and river. The shape is difficult to parse: it’s both humanoid and not. It’s far too big, too wide and too tall, and there are too many curves and angles. Whilst it is still draped in shadow, Martin can almost convince himself that it’s a bear. But then the lamplight catches a red, chapped elbow, and the monster steps into the light. 

Jared Hopworth is no longer a man. He stands at nearly ten feet tall. His clothes are stained and creased and torn. A heavy woolen cape sits haphazardly over five bulging arms. Martin’s heard the phrase ‘tree trunks for legs’, but he’s never really believed it until now, trying not to stare at the way that Hopworth’s thighs bulge at the seams of his brown trousers. His feet are bare and have too many toes. Martin doesn’t try to count his fingers. He’s wearing a bowler hat on his head, and his hair is red and greasy but carefully combed. Everything about him is too big, bulging and writhing where it shouldn’t. He takes another step forward, and Martin feels it vibrate through the brick on which he’s standing. Fog creeps quietly around Jared Hopworth’s impossible heels. 

Jon doesn’t flinch. Instead he holds out his hand, clears his throat politely, and says calmly, “Mr Hopworth, I presume?”

“Who’s asking?” Jared’s narrow, watery blue eyes shift over Jon’s shoulder to Martin. “And who’s your little friend?”

Martin doesn’t want to think about what Jared could possibly have done to his insides to make his voice sound like that, but he doubts that it’s anatomically ordinary. Jon stands his ground, even as Jared looms over him, dwarfing him easily. Martin takes half a step forward. 

“My name is Jonathan Sims. This is my associate, Martin Blackwood.”

Jared Hopworth nods and grunts. Two of his impossible arms drag their knuckles on the floor. “What do you want?”

“I understand that you are what they call a Boneturner.” Martin’s heart falls into his stomach. If Hopworth is surprised by Jon’s knowledge of the term, he makes no sign of it. Jon continues, meeting Jared’s eyes, though he has to crane his neck to do it. “I need you to take one of my ribs.”

“You need him to what?” Martin’s voice is too loud and too sharp. It ricochets off the brick walls, and Jared turns his heavy head to look at him like a bull scenting its enemy. Martin ignores him, stepping forward and grabbing Jon’s elbow. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Jon has the grace to at least look remorseful when he replies, putting one hand over Martin’s. His fingers are far too hot on Martin's skin. “I know. I’m sorry. But you would never have agreed to it.” 

“That’s not a good reason to do something, Jon,” Martin hisses, honestly angry now. The fog begins to dissipate. Jon squeezes his fingers and pulls his elbow back, and Martin lets him go reluctantly. Part of him wishes he could pull him back, somehow - tug on a string around his wrist and pull him away from this place and the horrors it holds for him. But he can’t, so he doesn’t. Martin clenches his teeth. Hopworth watches both of them like a dog watching its master, huge head swaying between them. 

“What’s in it for me?” Jared gurgles through a mouth of too many teeth. Jon straightens, stepping a little away from Martin. Martin purses his lips. 

“I can tell you the location of Tom Han.”

Martin thought that Jared would be slow: that his size would necessitate a certain reduction in speed, owing to the laws of physics if nothing else. Peter Lukas would tell him that things like them didn’t obey such petty laws as those invented by Mr Newton and his ilk. As one of Jared’s hands snaps forward, quick as a viper, Martin thinks perhaps he should have listened a little more closely. 

As it is he moves without thinking, catching Jared’s massive wrist in both his hands as he steps between him and Jon. Martin thinks of every person who’s ever abandoned him, and braces his feet against the bricks as Jared’s weight hits him like a freight train. Jon stumbles backwards, and Martin leans against Hopworth’s arm, putting his back into it as he tries to shove him away. One of Jared’s other arms moves towards him, and Martin feels the white fog rising up behind him like sea spray crashing against a cliff. Jared’s hand starts to fade under his touch. There’s a sound like cracking glass as the sewage freezes. 

Martin looks up, and glares into Jared Hopworth’s red face. “If you don’t want to pick a fight with the Forsaken, Mr Hopworth, then I politely suggest that you collect yourself.”

For a moment, Jared doesn’t move. The weight of his arm alone is enough to have Martin’s muscles shaking and Martin is trying to think fast about what the hell he’s going to do if he doesn’t back down. The oil lamp rests burning hot against Jared’s forearm, singeing his skin with the smell of cooking meat. Jared doesn’t seem to notice. Eventually, he steps back. Martin manages to catch himself, and the fog swirls and eddies up around his waist and torso. The candle in the lamp flickers, sending Jared’s body into a handful of shadows and strange shapes like a funhouse mirror. 

Jon coughs, forced and a little awkward. “Yes. Well. Thank you, Martin. Mr Hopworth?”

“Fine.” Jared spits the word, glowering down at Martin, who remains standing just a little in front of Jon. “Where is he?”

Jon chuckles, soft and mirthless. “I’m not a fool, Mr Hopworth. I’ll tell you after the, ah, surgery is complete.”

“Might not have your wits about you well enough to do it,” Jared points out, too loud in the quiet dark. 

The only outward sign of Jon’s apprehension is that, out of the corner of Martin’s eye, he sees him tense a little. Then he forces the tension out of his body with a loud exhale. “I’ll manage. Shall we?”

Jared steps forward again, this time eyeing Martin warily as he does so. Martin gives him a pointed smile, and hates him with every fibre of his being. Jon, meanwhile, is distracted, his sharp dark eyes running over the misshapen lines of Jared’s body. Martin isn’t really sure whether he thinks before he speaks. “What happened to you?” It’s like a bell has been rung. There’s a shiver and an echo in the air, a distortion that Martin can’t quite place.

Jared starts to speak immediately. “Where do you want me to start? Growing up? My folks? How ‘bout that growth spurt when I was nine? Left me taller than all the other kids.” There’s a wrenching in the air, and all of Jared’s hands fold into fists. Jared grinds his haphazard teeth, and the clicking sound runs down Martin’s spine. “You don’t get that for free, little Eye.” 

“Another rib then.” Jon volunteers it too quickly and too easily, and Marin can feel it now, the pressure of something huge and cruel above them to which neither he nor the creature before them belongs. 

“Jon,” Martin whispers, as if Jared won’t notice, trying to pull Jon back with sheer force of will, imagining some invisible thread between them on which he can somehow tug. He thought he’d given up on wishful thinking a long time ago. Apparently he was wrong.

Jon ignores him and holds out his hand. “A rib for me, and I’ll give you the location of Tom Han. And I’ll give you another rib if you’ll tell me how you ended up like this.” 

Jared cocks his head to the side, and the gesture is too delicate for a thing as big as him. But after a moment he takes Jon’s hand, leaning past Martin to do so. Martin lets him and hates himself for it, swallowing bile. Jared’s fingers envelop Jon’s hand, and they shake. Then Jared lets go. His extra arms sway lightly at his sides, as if moved by a nonexistent breeze. 

“So, where do we start?” 

Jon flexes his fingers. There are white and red fingerprints from Jared’s grip on the back of his hand and wrist. But he still doesn’t flinch when he looks up. “Tell me what happened to you.” Again, a power strikes the air.

This time Jared doesn’t stop himself. It’s a horrible story, but it doesn’t take long. Martin wonders how long his own would take. Jared finishes, and Jon nods, folding a piece of paper into his pocket. “Thank you.” 

Jared grunts, and moves again, stepping closer. It takes everything in Martin’s being for him not to move between them. Instead he watches. Jared curls over Jon like a monstrous parody of a lover. “You ready?” 

Jon looks at Martin, and there’s nothing Martin can do but watch. Jon nods. He hesitates and moves a hand to the buttons of his waistcoat. It trembles a little. “Should I?” He doesn’t finish the question. 

Jared shakes his huge head, and puts one hand on Jon’s shoulder. His fingers are too big and he grips Jon tightly. Martin steps closer, stomach lurching. “That won’t be a problem.” Then Jared moves another of his hands towards Jon’s rib cage. Jared’s fingers slip through Jon’s waistcoat and shirt as if they weren’t there, and then there’s a breath of silence. Jon breaks it with one short, high intake of breath that Martin thinks will haunt his nightmares for the rest of his existence. 

And then Jon starts to scream. 

Jared’s forearm is nearly up to the elbow in Jon’s chest, and there’s a horrible tilt to it as he moves inside him, pushing through bones and blood and organs. The sound of Jon’s body being pulled and squeezed fills Martin’s ears, somehow filtering past the hoarse echoes of Jon’s shouting, and Martin moves forward blindly, not sure of what he’s going to do but knowing he needs to do something. 

As soon as he’s within range of him, Jon grabs Martin’s hand. He’s squeezing tight enough to hurt, and when Martin looks at his face he can see that Jon’s cheeks are wet with tears. He shakes his head, red with pain, back bowed in a terrible curve as he tries to lean away from Jared’s hand, buried mercilessly deep within him. Martin can’t breathe. Jon’s screams are ringing in his ears, and there’s a prickling sweat running down his temples and he can’t do anything and he hates it all. He wants to run away. His hand is burning under Jon’s touch, blistering as he rebukes his god by being here when he is so desperately needed. Martin doesn’t let go. 

There is a wet snap. Jon sobs, breathing fast. His hand spasms tighter around Martin’s, so hard Martin can feel his bones grinding. And then Jared’s arm moves, and Jon shudders, and Martin finds himself half holding him up by his elbow. The tendons in Jared’s forearm stick out, and Jon hiccoughs on a whimper. He doesn’t shut his eyes. There’s another snap, muffled by Jon’s body and yet still somehow terribly loud. Jared starts to pulls his arm back, and Jon keeps crying out until it’s free. In Jared’s thick fingers are two curved white ribs that are somehow bloodless. He holds one out, and Jon takes it weakly, sweating and limp, still shaking from the pain. 

Jared lets go of Jon’s shoulder, and Jon collapses back into Martin’s arms, crumpling like a puppet. Jared stares at the other rib, lip curling in disgust, before slipping it into his own distended body. The action doesn’t seem to cause him any pain. “Where’s Tom Han?” 

Jon nods. His eyelids are fluttering erratically, and his eyelashes are inky and stuck together with tears. There’s spit around his mouth and snot around his nose. He slurs when he speaks. “Paris. Tuesday. Gare de Lyon. 11 o’clock.” 

Jared nods, and his watery blue eyes move to Martin. The candlelight casts strange shadows over his shoulders. “I should kill you, for the disrespect you showed me. There’s a code for these things.”

“I can see how you might think that.” Briskly, Martin takes off his jacket, and tries not to think too much about the monster watching him. He lays it on the floor, and then gently helps Jon to the ground. He goes easily, fingers curled around his rib like a child with a toy. 

In a waistcoat and shirt sleeves, Martin straightens and turns back to Jared Hopworth. He is angry, and he is scared, and he is to all intents and purposes alone. So he thinks of Peter Lukas. He drops his shoulders and he puts one hand into his pocket, holding the oil lamp high in the other. He relaxes and he smiles up at the monster in front of him, and he very carefully chooses not to think at all about the body of Jonathan Sims on the brickwork behind him. 

“Mr Hopworth, you have a choice.” White fog crawls down the river. “I will give you one chance to leave this place and give me your word that neither I, nor Jonathan Sims, nor any of our associates will ever see you or your ilk again. Or I will trap you in a place where you will wish you had died the first time you twisted that hulking thing you call a body.” The fog is a thick rolling white sea around their calves. Jared takes half a step back. Martin meets his eyes, and fog rolls out of his mouth, cold and white and endless. “Do not touch him again.” 

For a long moment Jared watches him, his arms curled and tense at his sides. Then he spits at the brickwork, and waves Martin off with a quick, irritated gesture. “Keep him. I don’t want any more eyes anyway.”

Jared turns and walks into the tunnel, disappearing into the thick white mist of a heavy and impossible fog. Martin watches the twisting cloud until he can no longer hear Jared's footsteps. Then he lets go.

* * *

As soon as Jared Hopworth is gone, Martin falls to his knees next to Jon, hovering just shy of brushing his hair back from his forehead where it’s been plastered by sweat to his skin. “That’s a hell of a thing to make a man watch when he’s known you a week.”

Jon huffs a laugh, then groans, clutching at his chest. Martin freezes, then leans forward, trying to go through the steps of care that had once been so familiar to him. “Where does it hurt?” 

Jon coughs another laugh, and a few more tears run down his dark cheeks. “Everywhere.” 

Martin frowns, but his mouth is trying to smile and his eyes are stinging, and Jon looks far too small and weary lying here in the dark on the cold stone. “That’s not helpful Jon.” 

Jon nods, and grabs Martin’s wrist with his free hand. He guides it to a point just above his stomach, and carefully places it on his chest. Martin can feel the rough tweed of Jon’s waistcoat under his palm, and the unsteady rise and fall of Jon’s chest as he tries to breathe. His other hand itches and stings where it was burned. 

Jon relaxes a little under Martin’s touch, and for the first time since they arrived his eyes flicker shut. “You’re cold.”

Martin frowns, going to pull back, but Jon’s hand moves quickly to keep him where he is. Jon winces with the movement and shakes his head. “S’good.” He sounds like he’s falling asleep. Martin can’t really blame him. Carefully he sets down the oil lamp, and moves his other burned hand onto Jon’s chest. Jon relaxes a little more. His eyes are still shut, but he starts to unbutton his waistcoat. 

Martin frowns. “What are you doing?” 

“Hurts,” Jon sighs. “And you’re helping.” He opens his eyes, and they’re rimmed red with his tears. “Please?” 

Martin swallows and nods. “Alright, let me.” Carefully, he unbuttons Jon’s waistcoat and pushes it aside. He hesitates at Jon’s shirt, checking that this is what he wants. Jon nods. Martin unbuttons the top half briskly, leaving the bottom fastened. It’s absurd in its intimacy: in a sewer with spiders skittering away from the lamplight, and the stink of flesh in the air, and Jon’s rib in his hand like a ghostly exclamation point. 

Martin gently pushes Jon’s shirt aside, trying to assess his injuries in the light of the oil lamp. Already, his skin is beginning to discolour with great, spreading bruises. Martin swallows and carefully lays his palms lightly over Jon’s rib cage. Jon sighs. A tear trickles from the corner of his closed eye down his cheek and into the silver in his hair. Martin tries to swallow the lump in his own throat and doesn’t entirely succeed. 

“It’s going to be okay Jon. I’m here. It’s alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I cannot imagine it is by coincidence that the only two entities of which we were not aware were those which would play so significant a role in our lives. It’s tempting, always, to ascribe such apparent coincidence to the Mother, but I don’t doubt that it is what she wants. I am quite certain the only entity involved in your suicidal encounter with Mr Hopworth was yourself. I am still not sure whether that makes you brave or stubborn._


	11. A Subterranean Expedition

It takes longer than it should to get back to Jon’s office, but then Martin supposes that’s what happens when a man has just lost two ribs and doesn’t have enough money for a coach. More than once, he considers taking Jon into the Lonely, but then he looks at the haggard expression on his face and he can’t bring himself to put him through any further horror. So it takes them over an hour to hobble through London, Martin’s arm carefully looped around Jon’s torso and Jon clutching his sleeve. 

When they arrive, Melanie’s there. She looks between Martin and Jon, who is visibly pale and limping, and her expression immediately darkens into something vicious. 

Before Martin has really had a chance to process it, there’s a knife at his throat and Melanie has her fist in his shirt and is pulling him down towards her and into the blade. The knife catches and pushes at his skin and it really wouldn’t take much at all to split him open, and Martin goes to pull back before he realises that would mean dropping Jon. So instead he stays where he is, and swallows as he looks down into Melanie’s eyes, which are dark in a face twisted by rage. 

Jon says, “Melanie!”

Melanie snarls, “What did you do to him?”

Martin swallows, and his skin runs over the edge of the knife. Jon carefully lets go of Martin and grabs Melanie’s arm. Melanie doesn’t even look at him. Martin wets his lips. “I didn’t do anything.” 

Melanie’s scowl deepens, chiseled in deep lines across her features like a stone mask. “Don’t lie to me.” 

Jon huffs. “Melanie, he’s telling the truth.” 

“He could have enchanted you.” Melanie still isn’t looking at Jon, and there’s no doubt in her voice. Her hand doesn’t move, and neither does the knife. “Don’t try to tell me you’re not hurt, Jon.” 

“He is hurt, but I didn’t do it.” Martin speaks as calmly as he can. He’s half amazed that no one has stopped to help, but then he supposes this is London. 

Melanie’s jaw clenches.“Stood and watched, did you? I should kill you for that, if nothing else.”

Martin doesn’t reply. 

Jon lifts his other hand to Melanie’s arm, visibly straining to try and push her hand away from Martin’s throat. “He did that because I asked him to, Melanie. Now if you could please lower the damn knife then we can talk about this like civilised people.” 

Melanie’s arm doesn’t move. She pushes the knife a little, and it presses into Martin’s skin, bending it around the blade. Martin lets out a short, quick breath. “I am talking. Tell me what happened.”

“I found the Boneturner.” Jon says. 

Melanie lowers the knife, but her grip around it hanging at her side is white knuckled. “You did what?” 

Martin laughs a little, resisting the urge to rub at his neck. “That’s what I said.” 

Melanie ignores him, attention entirely focused on Jon now, who had let go of Melanie as soon as she’d lowered her hand. “Jon, what have you done?” 

It’s at that point that Jon sways, and Martin catches him without thinking. A muscle in Melanie’s jaw twitches. Jon looks at her, and Martin can feel his body shaking with the effort of remaining standing. There’s a terrible absence at the bottom of his rib cage. “I promise I’ll explain. But I think I might need to sit down, first.” 

* * *

Jon explains. What he had failed to mention to Martin was exactly what he had planned to do with his rib. Martin thinks that it’s possible for the first time in a long time he is really, truly angry with someone. He stands between Jon and the coffin in his office (still warm, still singing) with his arms folded and looms over Jon in his chair.

“Absolutely not.” 

Melanie, who had been so protective before, sits and watches them quietly. She has yet to share her opinion on the whole ridiculous endeavour. Tim and Sasha’s ghosts are nowhere to be seen. Neither is Georgie. 

Jon’s expression sours. “I’m going with or without your permission, Martin.” 

Martin glares at him. The office smells of cat and paperwork and the fire. “Don’t try and make this about me. This is a suicide mission and I’m not just going to watch you do it.” 

“You barely know me. Besides, wouldn’t ‘comatose man mysteriously disappears’ make a good story for your paper? You could make a pretty penny out of it.” 

It’s a petty thing to stay, and Martin is surprised when it stings without the cold kiss of loneliness to soothe it. That’s not supposed to happen any more. He blinks. A spider skitters across Jon’s desk and disappears down one of the table legs. 

Martin is a little less calm than usual when he replies. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m obviously not just here for the paper.” 

“Then why are you here?” 

This time Martin feels the tug on his mind. He still has no idea how or why it’s happening, but knowing about it lets him rephrase his answer. He feels a cloud of cold rise in his head to help him resist the pull; and wonders at what it means that his god desires of him. “I care about you, obviously. Which is why I’m not comfortable with just watching you walk into a death trap.” 

Jon’s hands curl at his sides. He’s sitting stiff and awkward, but he looks less like he’s going to throw up, which is an improvement on earlier. “I told you, I have a plan. This isn’t a guaranteed death sentence, that’s the point.”

Martin tries very hard not to roll his eyes. “Yes, Jon, and technically, if I stab myself in the gut right now it’s not a guaranteed death sentence. But you’re not going to stand by and watch me rip myself open, are you?”

“I -,” Jon hesitates, and shuts his mouth, clearly wanting to disagree and finding himself unable to do so honestly. After a moment, he shakes his head. “That’s beside the point.” 

Martin’s temper snaps. “Why? Because it’s about me and not you? You do understand that hurting yourself also hurts the people you care about, right? Sure, you’re not hurting us physically. But what the hell do you think this does to, to me, to Georgie? How do you think she’d feel, if she came here and knew you’d killed yourself without a second bloody thought? How would you feel, if you found her dead? Not even that! Just never saw her again. Knew she was trapped, forever, buried alive.” Martin barely pauses to catch his breath. “Would you follow her? Do you really think that she wouldn’t follow you? Are you comfortable with that?” Jon looks away. Martin’s raising his voice and he feels like he’s burning and he can’t bring himself to care. “This isn’t a game, Jon.”

Jon says nothing. Outside, the sounds of night falling echo through the street - cabs and horses and street sellers packing away their wares. A flock of pigeons jumps off the pavement into the air with a cacophony of feathers. 

Melanie breaks the quiet. “I think you should do it.” Jon’s gaze snaps to her, and Martin can’t read his expression. His eyes are a little wide, and the rest of his features are absolutely still. His fingers remain half uncurled in his lap. But there’s a crack of vicious cold that strikes Martin so fast he almost loses his breath. 

“You do?” Jon’s voice is low, and still rough from his screaming earlier. There’s no emotion in it that Martin can hear, despite the deep chill of loneliness in the air between them.

Melanie methodically rips apart a piece of paper on her desk as she speaks. “Daisy’s alive in there. We think we have a way to get her out. The monster’s right, this isn’t a game. She went into that...circus with you knowing she might not survive it. We owe it to her to take the risk, even if our survival isn’t guaranteed.”

Martin makes a Herculean effort not to point out that Melanie is not talking about going into the coffin herself. Jon, of course, is nodding. 

“My thoughts exactly.” Jon looks at Martin. The bags under his eyes are as blue as tattoos. “I have to do this. And I’m sorry, Martin, but I’m afraid you have no say in that.” 

Martin thinks about this. He could force Jon to be safe. He could trap him, alone and relatively unharmed, and leave him in Forsaken for the rest of eternity. At least then he’d live. (Martin’s god did not give up its prey to things as petty as mortality.) 

But he looks at Jonathan Sims, sitting in his chair, dirty and tired and haggard, determination blazing out of him like the light of a distant star. And Martin thinks, probably, that there is nothing in the world more important than letting Jonathan Sims hold his life in his own hands. 

Martin does not want Jon to die. But Jon does not belong to him. 

So he lets out a long breath that had been trapped for too long in his lungs, and with it the muscles in his body loosen. Martin doesn’t step aside. He still can’t quite make himself do that. But he nods, and the look of relief on Jon’s face hits him like a knife to the heart and he wonders what Jon thought he was going to do, exactly. What Jon might have known he was considering. 

“Thank you, Martin.” Jon’s voice is rough, and Martin can’t tell if it’s from sincerity or the screaming. Jon meets his eyes, and Martin shrugs and turns his head to hide his blush.

“It’s your life.” Martin tugs on his ear. “It’s, um. You know. Not everyone has that.” He can feel Jon’s eyes on him, but he can also feel Melanie’s gaze, and besides, Martin isn’t sure how much more emotion he can survive in one evening. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jon nod and put his hands on his knees. Jon tries to swallow the quiet whimper that escapes him as he stands, and he doesn’t quite succeed. Martin glances at Melanie, and then at the coffin, and then back up at Jon. 

“But you can wait one night, surely?” Martin barely notices lifting his arm over Jon’s shoulder, hovering as if to grasp it and not quite finding the confidence to do so. “You can -,” he swallows, “you can make your goodbyes. To Georgie, at least.” 

Jon’s face gets a little green, and Martin doesn’t think it’s the injury. He steps forward, skirting a yellow door in the wall of the office and moving to the hall. “Right. Yes. Of course.” Behind Martin, the coffin sings.

Jon stops in the doorway, and looks up at Martin. Martin tries to give him a smile, but he’s not sure how well it works. All he can think is that he’ll be buried alive tomorrow. That Martin is going to let him do it. 

(Melanie’s voice, low with anger, rings in his head, _ stood and watched, did you? I should kill you for that, if nothing else. _)

Jon clears his throat, and it sounds thick and painful. “Good night Martin.” 

Martin’s hand is still hanging in the air. He curls his fingers and lets it fall and tries not to think of dead flowers and other such transient things. “Good night Jon.” 

Jon opens his mouth, and Martin’s heart lurches in his chest. But then Jon shuts it, and gives Martin a crooked, embarrassed smile, and turns and walks away with one arm pressed gently to his rib cage.

Martin watches him go. After a moment, Melanie clears her throat. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Mr Blackwood?” 

Martin doesn’t, but Melanie’s meaning is clear enough. So he pulls on his coat, and gives her a quick wave, and turns and steps into the Lonely.

The office fades away, washed with greys and whites and shadows. The yellow door disappears entirely. Martin takes a deep breath, and pulls his coat a little tighter around his body. Then he walks away, shivering.

* * *

Martin is too late. He gets to Ghost Hunt UK before the sun has risen, when the streets are kissed with the empty grey chill of a sun that has yet to rise pushing back the night. He walks briskly down the pavement, trying hard not to run, and when he gets to the offices he knocks too fast and too hard on the door. 

Part of him knows he’s too late, even then, standing in the doorway and glaring at a disgusting little maggot in the grass under the windowsill. Martin isn’t sure whether he knows because of his god or because of whatever emotional connection he’s been forming despite Forsaken. He really should have listened more closely to Peter’s lessons, but he can’t bring himself to regret the path that brought him here. 

After several minutes, Martin knocks again and raises his voice. “Jon! Open the door!” He thinks that three weeks ago he’d have been mortified, even if it was near impossible that any passer-by would notice him. Now the lack of decorum feels infinitely less important than the fact that no one is answering and he knows what that means.

Time passes, and it is both far too slow and far too fast. The streets begin to fill with people who pay Martin absolutely no mind. A curious grey tabby cat gets as close as the wall to the front garden of the offices, then turns up her nose and struts away along the brickwork. Martin feels as if his heart and lungs are working too fast, despite the fact that he knows that’s impossible for a number of reasons. He knocks again, and his hand aches with the force of it. “Melanie! Georgie! Is anyone there? Ms Barker? Ms King?”

There’s no answer. Martin makes a wordless sound of frustration, and steps back to look up at the building and search for smoke from the chimney. The red brick stack stands still and empty against the grey white sky. Martin swears under his breath in his mother tongue and steps off the little path to the door to peer through the windows. The rooms beyond are dark and still, as far as he can tell through the white lace of the curtains.

Martin rubs his fingers together, trying to think. He’s pretty sure he knows what he’s going to do, now he just has to find the courage to do it. He lets his thoughts whirl for a minute more, and he thinks about Jon, wounded and crushed beneath an impossible mountain. He feels his mouth set, and he lets his shoulders drop, glancing over his shoulder for an improbable onlooker before stepping through the veil of the Lonely.

Martin ignores the impossible sensation of being watched, and slips a lock pick out of his pocket. He’d forgotten he’d even bought the thing, years ago when he’d first started chasing stories and had little luck doing so. But it was on his bedside table this morning stuck to a strand of cobweb and Martin had had a bad feeling that he was going to need it. He hates the fact that he was right. 

It takes Martin a few minutes to unlock the door, he’s more than a little out of practice. Eventually he manages, and swings the door open into a cold, dark hall. 

Martin steps inside warily, shutting the door with a gentle click and brushing off a strand of spider web hanging from the ceiling that catches the bright grey light of the early morning. “Jon?” His voice is quiet now, hushed by the heavy silence of the empty building. “Melanie? Georgie?” Martin pauses and swallows, eyes fixing for a moment on a bright yellow door. “Tim? Sasha?” 

Nothing stirs. Not even the dead. At the end of the hall there’s a soft, terrible humming lullaby spilling out of the office and into the shadows. Martin clenches his teeth and puts the lock pick away. He starts to walk down the corridor. 

The first thing he notices is that the chains are on the floor. They sit in a haphazard pile of dark iron next to the pale yellow wood of the coffin itself. There’s a different quality to its song now. Before it was almost sad. Longing. Now it seems triumphant. Martin hates it. 

On Jon’s desk is a folded piece of paper. Martin’s name is written on it in cramped, crooked handwriting. Martin swallows the hard lump in his throat, and it hurts. He picks his way around the coffin and takes the note. Between its halves is the long smooth elegant white curve of Jon’s rib. Martin picks it up carefully. It’s cool and soft between his fingers. With his other hand, Martin unfolds the paper. Still holding Jon’s bone, he starts to read.

“_ Martin. _

<strike> _ Georgie said that - Georgie isn’t - She’s not _ </strike>

_ Georgie didn’t want to be here. I thought - Forgive me, I thought it best to leave without further ceremony. Think of me what you will, but I’m not sure I could have done this with an audience. _

_ I will try to come back. I do believe the rib should work as an anchor. _

_ But if I don’t - I think I’m changing. And I cannot bring myself to regret dying as I am instead of living to become something that I am not. Something that I do not want to be. _

_ I never wanted to hurt anyone. _

_ Do not mourn for me, Martin. I think for once I’m doing something good. _

_ And I suppose if I survive, you can always chastise me for this later. _

<strike> _ It was good - I wish we had - It’s been - I wanted to say _ </strike>

_ I am very glad to have met you. _

_ Yours, _

_ Jonathan Sims’ _

Martin takes a moment to re-read the note. His tears are falling onto the paper, and he only really brings himself to care when they smudge the ink. Carefully, he sets it back down on the table, gently setting Jon’s rib beside it. He looks at the coffin. The office is very quiet, and still in the grey twilight of the early morning spilling through the window. 

He considers trying to open the thing. To jump inside and throw himself into the dark, what’s left of his own life be damned. Martin’s fingers curl and uncurl. He imagines that there’s some great invisible rope between he and Jon. As if Jon were an explorer and Martin were his anchor, waiting to pull him back up out of the depths into which he had descended. 

Absently, Martin’s hand twists in the empty air. It’s a stupid fantasy. But in that moment he wants nothing more desperately than to be able to pull on that invisible string and tug Jon back to him. To have him safe and alive and unafraid. To never let him go again. 

Experimentally, Martin pulls.

Nothing happens. His throat is thick again and his eyes are burning. Martin wonders how the hell he’s supposed to write about any of this for the paper. Then he pulls up a chair and sits, facing the coffin. And he waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Melanie King, all gunpowder and knife edges - I was so sure she hated you. And yet it seemed she was ready to hate me more if I hurt you. I sometimes wonder whether it was these nuances and contradictions that had made it so difficult for me in life to understand human connection. To hate and love at once seems strange to me, and yet I think I felt both when you left me, and threw yourself into that place from which I could not save you._


	12. A Matter of Perspective

Martin spends the day at Ghost Hunt UK. No one else comes. He thinks he understands why Georgie hasn’t, but he’s half surprised that Melanie isn’t around. Not that he knows much about her. He’s tempted to explore, partly to satisfy his curiosity and partly so he has something to do with himself other than sit and worry. He tries to write, but every time he does his mind fills with images of Jon, terrified and suffocating.

Words don’t come. 

Once, Martin tries to open the coffin. He wraps his fingers around the old, warm wood, and pulls. It doesn’t move. He inspects the thing for nails and sees none. It’s just held shut by some invisible force. Martin is reminded of an exotic thing brought back by explorers of distant rainforests: a carnivorous plant they’d dubbed the Venus flytrap. He scowls at the wood and lets go, trying not to think too hard about it digesting its prey.

When he’s not having a staring contest with a coffin or trying and failing to write, Martin makes himself tea. He promises himself he’ll give Georgie some money for it later. 

He’s on his seventh cup when Tim appears behind him with a flicker and a quick, loud, “Boo!” 

Martin jumps, swears and drops his mug. It shatters on the floor, and the sound is far too loud in the quiet building. Tim watches him with his arms folded, looking amused as Martin crouches to clean up the mess. “What was that? Czech?” 

Martin glares at the shards of broken china, ignoring the scald of the tea on his hands. “Polish.” He glances up. “Where’s Sasha?”

The smile on Tim’s face flickers. “She’s resting. It’s not...easy for us to get into this dimension. I think the last trip took it out of her.” Tim gives Martin a pointed glare. 

Martin sighs, dropping the remains of the mug in the bin with a thump and clatter before rinsing his hands and drying them on a tea towel. “I’d really prefer not to have this argument again, if it’s all the same to you.” 

Tim opens his mouth as if to argue, but then he looks over Martin, taking in his expression and the way he’s standing. “What happened? You look like hell.”

Martin laughs, setting about making a new cup of tea. “I imagine I do.” The kettle is heavy, and the fire licks heat against his arms as he sets it to boil.

“And where is everyone? It’s the middle of the day, right?” Tim’s voice is a little distant, and Martin turns to see him looking around the office, confusion marring the handsome planes of his face. Then his gaze falls to the pile of chains, and Martin watches Tim realise what’s happened. His jaw tenses and his hands flex at his sides. When he speaks, he does so quietly. “What did he do?” 

The kettle starts to boil with a low rumble and then a bright, squealing whistle. Martin pours the water into the teapot, and dumps a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk into his mug. He resists the urge to ask if Tim wants any. “He went into the Buried. Had the Boneturner tear his ribs out, too. That was awful.” Martin hadn’t really realised that he was angry with Tim for this, but he feels it now. “Are you pleased with yourself?” He crosses the small space of the kitchen and walks into the office, until he’s standing in front of Tim. Martin is a little taller, and he glares. “Is this what you wanted?” He gestures at the coffin. Tim flinches.

“Yes and no.” The idea that Tim had meant for this to happen had somehow not yet crossed Martin’s mind. He feels fury hit him like ice water. 

“Explain.” Martin’s voice is very quiet. The fire in the grate flickers and sputters. The world outside the window fades away. Tim is staring at the rib on Jon’s desk. 

“Sasha died for him, you know? My death was my choice. But she was just a pawn. A convenient way to make him feel bad. Wherever he goes, he pulls the people around him into danger. And you feel like you don’t have a choice because you know he doesn’t mean it but he’s doing it anyway.” Tim looks Martin in the eye. “And at what point do his intentions stop mattering? Before we die? After? Or do we draw the line at light dismemberment?”

Martin is shaking. “So this was your plan to get rid of him, then? To protect the others.” 

Tim clicks his tongue. “No. No, that wasn’t.” He takes a deep breath that he doesn’t need and forces it out quickly in a convincing imitation of a living man. “I don’t like Daisy. She’s a killer. But she, Basira - Jon has to learn about the effect he has on other people. That his actions have consequences.”

The floor of the room is filled with an impossible fog. It skirts around the coffin as if repelled, and clings to Tim’s incorporeal ankles. “So this was to punish him?” 

Tim immediately raises his hands, palms outward, glancing down at the fog. “No! No. No, that was. Dammit.” He laughs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I learned how to hate Jonathan Sims. But I still care for him. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want this.”

“What did you think was going to happen? That he’d leave her?” Martin’s voice is too loud and too high and he doesn’t care.

“Maybe!” Tim shouts back, and it doesn’t echo like Martin’s voice does. “I mean, come on. You can’t seriously think I expected him to do this.” Tim gestures at the rib. “I thought. God. I thought that maybe he’d try to save her and it would be frightening and dangerous and he’d learn how he makes his bloody entourage feel when he throws himself into these situations. I didn’t think he’d jump straight to mutilation. Christ.” 

Martin steps back. He feels suddenly very, very tired. The fog sinks into the carpet and the walls, and the sounds of the city return as if they’re surfacing from deep water. Martin sits down and clutches his head. Tim’s ghost makes no sound as he comes closer. For a moment the two of them are quiet, and there’s only the crackle of the fire and the song of the coffin. 

“What happened to your hand?” 

Martin glances at it: at his red and blistered fingers and his peeling palm, shiny and pink with his burn. “He held my hand. When he was - while - with the Boneturner.” Martin shuts his eyes. “There was so much screaming.” He says it very quietly. There’s a brief, aching chill in his shoulder, and Martin looks up to see Tim looking down at him.

“You should rest. Jon is...selfish and self-absorbed and obsessive but. He wouldn’t want you to make yourself sick over him. He never does.” 

Martin smiles a sharp, bitter smile into the heels of his palms. “That doesn’t sound selfish to me.”

Tim sighs. “Give it time.” 

* * *

Tim stays with Martin until night falls and he begins to flicker. He shows Martin where the emergency food is kept, where his keys were and where the blankets are. Then, with one last guilty look at the coffin, he vanishes. 

Martin sits with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, less for the warmth than the comfort, and stares at the coffin. Jon’s rib sits on the desk next to him and does a sum total of nothing. Moonlight filters through the window. He can feel the chill embrace of loneliness filling the room. He waits for it to drown him. 

He has no idea how long this is supposed to take. But it’s nearly midnight and the idea of Jon being in that place for this long, even if nothing has gone awry, is slowly becoming more than Martin can bear. He looks at the rib. He looks at the clock. He feels loneliness lapping at his chest like a cold, quiet sea. 

Martin thinks about anchors. He thinks about bodies, and about what little he knows of Jonathan Sims. He cannot help but think that Jon has shown very little regard for his bodily wellbeing in the short time that Martin’s known him. It’s hard to imagine that now his relationship with himself will be his salvation.

The thought eats at the edges of Martin’s mind, fraying his resolve. 

It’s so clear that what keeps Jon grounded is his affection for other people. It’s so hard to imagine that cutting that tie could possibly be a good plan, based on what little Martin knows of the entities and their rituals. Martin chews his lip. He really should have paid more attention to Peter’s lessons. 

The coffin sings. 

The clock hits midnight and Martin holds his breath, some stupid irrational part of him raised listening to old folk tales half expecting the time to have any sort of significance. But then the minute passes, and the coffin doesn’t stir. Martin clenches his teeth in an effort to squeeze out the tension running through his body. 

Another minute passes.

Martin gets to his feet. He sends a quick prayer to a god that isn’t listening that Jon doesn’t come back while he’s gone and crawl out of that place into an empty room. He hesitates over the rib, then slips it into his jacket pocket, too afraid of it being stolen by the things that lurk in the dark. If Jon could find it from the depths of Too Close I Cannot Breathe, a few streets shouldn’t matter. Martin isn’t going far. The bone presses a slender curve over Martin’s rib cage, directly above his heart.

Martin checks over the office one last time, Tim’s keys in his hand. He steps forward, and puts his hand on the coffin’s lid. It’s still warm, and kissed silver by moonlight. “You’re going to give him back.” It’s a promise and a threat.

For just a moment, the walls and ceiling of the office seem terribly close, so close they’re crushing him, plastered walls pushing against his arms and chest, painted ceiling pressing down onto his head. But then Martin blinks, and ice wraps around his heart, and he lifts his hand from the wood. The walls recede with a flicker like a mirage. Martin stares at the coffin.

He leaves without looking back. 

* * *

If Georgie Barker is surprised by the fact that Martin is outside her front door at midnight, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she steps back and gestures for him to come inside. Martin wonders at the wisdom of her letting a monster she’s barely known a week walk into her house in the middle of the night, but he also doubts that Georgie is making the decision out of ignorance. He wonders whether she’s thought about how to kill him, if she needed to.

Georgie’s house is tall and beautiful, full of honey coloured wood furnishings and deep red carpets. Brass lamps spill gold light over the wallpaper, and despite the chill of the night the place exudes warmth and comfort. Georgie herself is tense, and still wearing her day clothes. She walks briskly to the parlour and gestures Martin inside. The Admiral meows at him loudly from where he had been sleeping in a chair next to the fire. 

Martin hesitates, the part of him that has spent decades in gutters and workman’s clothes unsure of how to approach a room so artfully laid out that it looks like a painting. Jon’s rib is hard against his chest. 

Georgie closes the door with a soft creak and comes closer in a whisper of skirts, setting down the candle she’d been carrying. The light flickers over the varnished wood of her coffee table. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to collapse.” Georgie sounds exhausted but not unkind, and Martin sits gratefully, perching on the edge of a beautifully embroidered chair. 

Georgie bends, her copper hair pulling loose from her bun with the movement, and picks up a second glass. She pours Martin a brandy from the open bottle next to her without a word, and leans forward to hand it to him. She takes a deep gulp of her own before she speaks. “Is he dead?” Her voice is as brittle as cracked glass.

Martin’s stomach flips. “No.” He hesitates. “I don’t think so. I mean, Choke wouldn’t kill him anyway. It would just keep him there. Suffering.” 

There’s a sharp anger in the pinch of Georgie’s features, around her nose and mouth as she stares into the fire. Her eyes flicker gold in the light. “Of course.” She says it quietly. 

Martin clears his throat, and takes a sip of his brandy, relishing the sting. He sits up in his chair, and lifts his chin. “It’s been too long. He should have been back by now.”

Georgie looks at the brandy in her hands. Her mouth pulls back and falls, and she shuts her eyes. “He shouldn’t have gone in the first place.”

Martin bites back his irritation. “Be that as it may, it’s done now. Surely you are as unwilling as I am to leave him there.” Martin catches himself, “If, if not moreso.” 

The smell of alcohol is sharp in the room. It mixes with the faint scent of dust and the cat, which mar and comfort the decadence of the furnishings. Georgie swallows. “What if he doesn’t want to come back?”

Martin frowns. “You can't believe -,”

“Do you know how many times I’ve watched Jonathan Sims try to die, Mr Blackwood?” Georgie interrupts him, and when she meets his gaze her eyes are as bright as honey and amber. Abruptly, Martin realises she’s already wearing black. “Do you know how many times I’ve tried to stop him? This is new to you. He’s new to you. He’s still exciting and brave. You look at him and see a man willing to give up everything, to face anything, to do what he must for other people.” Georgie’s chest lifts and falls as she takes a quick, deep breath. “I look at him and all I see is how painful it is to love him.”

Martin looks away. The rug under his feet is beautiful and thick and expensive. He presses his fingers around the glass in his hand, and imagines it cracking under the pressure. “I can’t begin to imagine how you feel - ,”

“No. But you’ll learn.” Georgie’s voice shakes a little. The Admiral meows at her, getting up from his seat and hopping into her lap, purring at her and nuzzling her hands. “Shh. I’m fine, you silly creature.” 

Martin leans forward, and Jon’s rib presses into his own. He gulps down the brandy. “I don’t know how you feel, Georgie. But I can make an educated guess. I watched while a monster tore his ribs out and. Well.” Martin looks at the burns on his hand, already healing. He shakes his head. “I can’t leave him there. I just.” He curls his fingers, not quite clenching them. “I can’t.” 

The fire spits and pops. Georgie sighs. The Admiral is curled in her lap, like a ball of embers in the charcoal silk of her skirts. “No. Neither can I.” Both of them are quiet for a moment. Then Georgie sets down her empty glass. “So what do we do?” 

Martin sits up, and looks around the room: at the dusty bookshelves and porcelain figurines on the mantelpiece. An old, beautiful grandfather clock stands in the corner and long thick red velvet curtains cover the window. He passes a hand over his face, and pushes back a handful of curls that have pulled free from the ribbon in his hair. “Jon thought that his body would be a suitable anchor. I…” He hesitates, “I’m not sure that’s the case. I don’t see how it could be. I realise that I’ve not known any of you for very long, but he doesn’t demonstrate much interest in his own body, let alone its preservation.”

Georgie laughs, and pours herself a little more brandy, pausing to scratch the Admiral’s ears. “No, I’d say that’s accurate.”

Martin nods, a little more sure of himself with the confirmation. Shadows jump and dance over the rug. “Right. But he does care about people.” He doesn’t quite look at Georgie, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest that burns too bright to tell whether it’s hot or cold. “He cares about you.” 

Georgie makes a very soft sound of understanding, and brushes a little of the Admiral’s fur from her skirts. “You think that I can bring him back.” 

She doesn’t sound convinced, and Martin tries to ignore the sudden panic that wriggles uncomfortably through his ribcage like freshly hatched butterflies. “Do you know anyone that’s closer to him?”

Georgie looks at him. Her eyes are clever and bright, and her features are still and calm. She sits well, posture straight and confident. Her hands rest in her lap like those of a pianist about to start a symphony. She lifts one hand to her head, and tucks a strand of copper hair behind her ear. “I don’t think so, no.”

Martin nods. “R-right. He doesn’t have any family, does he?”

Georgie shakes her head. “Only his grandmother.” She purses her lips for a moment before her expression smooths again. “She passed away some years ago. Jon’s parents died when he - when we were children.” 

“Alright. Then you’re his strongest connection to this world.” Martin swallows the lump in his throat, and chastises himself for his own stupid selfishness. (Of course she is. Jon barely knows him.) 

“So what, then? Should I...go after him?” There’s no fear in Georgie’s voice, only curiosity and some element of frustration. Martin would be more amazed if he didn’t remember her encounter with the End, and the scar it left on her. As it is, he shakes his head.

“No. Even if it doesn’t scare you, that...It’s painful and dangerous and I think Jon’s ghost would kill me for letting you. Though Melanie might beat him to it.” Martin forces a quick, high laugh. Georgie raises her eyebrows at him. 

“So what’s the plan?”

Martin sighs. “I mean, I know as little about this as you do. I don’t…” He gestures at himself. “This doesn’t come with any free knowledge. There’s no user manual. I just.” He swallows a string of curses and rests his elbows on his thighs, staring at the half full glass of brandy in his hands. “I think maybe, if we go to the office - if we’re as close as possible, and maybe if you bring things that mean something to him. Then that. Might help.” 

“It might help.” Georgie echoes, flatly. The Admiral hops down out of her lap and pads softly away, through the open door and into the empty hall. “And how long do we wait? I don’t know how mortality works for you, but I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for him to come back.”

Martin drinks his brandy. It’s caramel and fire and the bitter sting of alcohol on his tongue. “Give him another day.” He meets Georgie’s eyes now, and holds her gaze. “Give him that. Please.” 

Georgie’s mouth trembles, until she purses her lips into a thin line and sits back, brushing off her skirts again as she stands. “Alright. Well. I think I have some of his things lying around. I suppose we shouldn’t waste any more time talking about it.” 

Martin thinks about Jon, clawing his impossible way back up and out of Choke, to find himself alone and abandoned in the dark cold of his office. He feels like he’s going to throw up. He carefully sets down his glass on the polished coffee table and shakes his head. “No. We shouldn’t.”

It doesn’t take Georgie long to fetch Jon’s things. There are pitifully few. A pair of dark blue knitted boots for a baby, an old bible, a fountain pen and a copy of Hamlet. The first three had belonged to his parents, and the last had been a gift from his grandmother. Georgie carefully packs them into a basket, which she fills with bread and cheese and fruit. Once she’s covered it all carefully with several linen napkins, she picks up the Admiral and drops him inside, where he lies and purrs. Then she fetches her keys (Martin is mostly amazed a woman of her means lives without serving staff) and meets Martin in the hallway. The lamps flicker against the walls, and when Georgie opens the front door onto the black night and the empty street, she shivers. 

“I should probably be scared of you, right?” She stands a foot shorter than Martin, and yet he can’t quite bring himself to think of her as small. 

He rubs the back of his neck. The moon is hidden by the clouds and the smog, and the shadows are deep and dark. Normally, he’d be hunting by now. As it is, he can feel hunger deep in his gut like a wound, pulling at him. “I mean, probably.”

Georgie’s eyes are almost black in the dark. “I’m not.”

Martin laughs. “I know.” Georgie shuts the door, and locks it, and Martin offers her his arm. “Ms Barker?”

Georgie loops her arm through his, and passes him the basket to carry. The Admiral grumbles a little but doesn’t stir. Martin can almost imagine he’s living the life he’d been meant to lead: if it were day time, and Georgie cared for him, and there was no great hole in his heart. If he could feel the cold. 

Georgie squeezes his arm. “Shall we, Mr Blackwood?”

Martin nods, collecting his thoughts. Together, they set off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I laboured under no illusions that after a matter of weeks, you should care for me so deeply that I could pull you back from the belly of that beast. Besides, you were surrounded by people who loved you, apparently despite themselves, both the living and the dead. I went to Georgie Barker, because her love seemed brightest, and yours for her in turn. I tried not to envy her. I suppose, in the interest of honesty, I must confess I did regardless._


	13. There and Back Again

Georgie and Martin sit up together through the night. They watch the sun rise through the window. The Admiral sits on Jon’s desk, where he has been ever since they arrived. Martin isn’t sure whether the cat knows that something’s wrong - he’d certainly been very interested in Jon’s rib, and Martin had been half concerned that he’d try to eat it. Either way, he seems unwilling to budge, and Georgie had told him it was best to just leave the tabby alone until his mood shifted. 

For her part, Georgie has been unnervingly cheerful. Despite the late hour they arrived, she’s been bustling around the building and keeping the lamps lit as if it were a normal day at work. Now she’s sitting at her desk, sifting through papers and occasionally making notes in their margins, brow pinched with a furrow in the shape of a comma. Martin sits in the chair they seemed to reserve for their guests and twiddles his thumbs. He has half a mind to do his own work, but he’d need to stop by his office in order to do anything but the column, and he’s unwilling to leave again so soon. So instead he glares at the singing coffin and taps a half-remembered rhythm against the back of his hand. 

By the time it’s midday, Martin isn’t sure how much more he can take. He’s moved a little closer to Jon’s desk now, and occasionally he pets the Admiral. It does something to ease his shattered nerves, but not enough as he watches the sunlight shift and feels the aching in his gut grow. He’s gone longer without feeding before, but not often, and it’s never gone well. 

It’s three o’clock when Georgie glances up, sharply. “Martin.” The word is a warning, and Martin glances over his shoulder, as if there could possibly be someone watching him in the wall itself. “No, Martin, it’s you. You’re...making things cold?” 

Martin looks back at Georgie and wishes he wasn’t blushing. In the grate, the fire sputters and chokes. Now that she’s pointed it out he can feel it: a pool of cold and loneliness in which he’d been steeping, one that had slowly spread to fill the building. Even the Admiral’s fur is chilled, though the cat doesn’t seem particularly disturbed. Martin bites the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”

Georgie sits back, setting down her pen and pushing the hair back from her forehead. The bags under her eyes are the colour of lilac flowers. “It’s alright. You don’t seem to take well to waiting.”

Martin shrugs, quick and still embarrassed. “How do you do it?” He doesn’t mean to sound so openly yearning, but he does anyway. 

Georgie tilts her head to the side with a cockeyed smile. “Practice.” Her expression softens. “It helps to have something to do.” She gestures at the cup on her desk. “Like making tea.” Her smile is teasing, now, and Martin tugs on his hair. “Didn’t you want to interview me?”

“What?” 

“A few weeks ago. When Jon was -,” Georgie hesitates, glancing around her cluttered desk as if it will provide her with the word she’s looking for. “When he was sleeping. You sent me a letter. I admit I’d forgotten. We had enough story-hungry journalists getting in touch ‘with the best intentions’ that I’d chosen to ignore them all. But you wrote me, from The Observer, didn’t you?”

Martin nods. Georgie gives him a bright smile. “Well, want to do it now?” Martin looks at the coffin. It sings. Georgie scoffs. “It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

Martin takes a deep breath. Outside, a bird chirps on a red brick wall, close enough to filter through the glass. “Ok. Um.” He stops, and goes into his bag, fumbling with his notebook before fetching a pen and a pot of ink. He stands, and his legs ache. Carefully, Martin picks his way around the coffin, and pulls up Melanie’s chair. It’s heavy, and he tries to turn it without making too much noise, despite the lack of any other occupants in the building. Martin sits, and Georgie leans back, moving her papers aside and interlocking her fingers. Neither of them look at the coffin. Martin clears his throat and opens his notebook: it folds easily along a spine broken by overuse. 

“How did you meet Jonathan Sims?”

Georgie’s gaze flickers to the coffin. Then she looks back at him, and her smile is somehow stiffer than it had been before. “We met when we were children. It’s hard to imagine my life without Jon, really.” Georgie blinks, and her eyes are bright. “It feels like he’s always been a part of it.”

* * *

Night falls. Martin watches the clock. He’s written a decent follow up to his first piece on Jon, thanks to Georgie, and the work had helped. But now he’s back to wondering, and Georgie is looking at the clock too, and he’s trying to figure out how to make her stay. 

The office is full of firelight: from candles on the desks to the fire in the main room and another in the kitchen. There’s a small stack of dirty plates and cups in the kitchen that neither Georgie nor Martin have had the energy to clean. Melanie is still noticeably absent. The Admiral is asleep on Jon’s desk. Jon’s rib lies clean and beautiful in Martin’s hand. He turns it over and over, running his fingertips over the smooth, cool surface of the thing. 

The coffin hasn’t changed. Martin had stepped into Forsaken, once, just to see if there was any difference. But all that did was make the coffin seem further away. Which made sense: as far as he knows the avatars and entities don’t tend to walk lightly in one another’s domains. It’s exactly why he isn’t in there with Jon already. Martin chews the inside of his cheek, and watches the coffin, trying to keep his gaze sharp. In the night outside the window, horses clip down the cobbled streets. Occasionally there’s the loud rough singing of a drunkard. 

Martin can feel something that isn’t his deep inside his bones pulling at him to go and wander the night. To find someone to slake the thirst that he’s been suppressing for days now. He ignores it, and finds himself grateful that Melanie isn’t here. At least he can’t feed on Georgie, even if he wanted to. 

They’d set up a little stack of the things that mattered to Jon on his desk, close to the coffin but not quite touching it. Martin wants to look through them: at the Bible and the play especially. But he hasn’t touched them. He’s seized with the irrational notion that they’re relics, somehow, and that his contact will pollute them. So he keeps his hands to himself, and rolls Jon’s rib between his fingers and thumb. 

The clock reaches midnight, and Georgie sets down the letter she’s been pretending to read by candlelight for nearly three hours. She turns, and stares at the coffin, and then at Martin beyond it. He’d taken up his seat by Jon’s desk once they’d finished their interview, and worked there on the other side. They hadn’t spoken much, but now Georgie breaks the silence. “It’s been a day, Martin.” 

Martin swallows. “I know.” He squeezes the rib in his hand and turns to look at Georgie. The coffin is a chasm of yellow wood between them. “I know, but he’s not dead. I just. We can’t give up on him. Not yet.” He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to give up on Jonathan Sims. He thinks he could forgive Georgie for doing so if she had to. Just. Not yet. 

Georgie laughs, softly, and runs her hands through her hair, carefully re-tying it. It’s almost indecent, but Martin can’t really bring himself to care. Women had never quite touched his heart in the way that men could, and their situation was absurd enough that caring about decorum at this point just seemed petty. “This is the way it always works, you know. You tell yourself you’re giving him one last chance. And then you give him another.” Martin bites back his frustration. But before he has the chance to retort, Georgie continues. “This isn’t working.”

“If you just give it -, ”

Georgie holds up a hand. Her fingers are stained black by ink. “Let me finish. This isn’t working. We need to do something else. You said you’d tried opening it?” 

Martin nods, unsure of what to do with the sudden tension that had risen in his body and piled itself on top of the rest. “It won’t budge.” He shrugs, and rubs the back of his neck. “And, ah, I’m stronger than I look.” He’d been strong before. But after he met Peter, it’d become almost absurd. Georgie taps her lips and nods, looking thoughtful. 

“That makes sense. We’ve had similar cases in the other statements we’ve read.” 

Martin frowns. “Statements?”

Georgie gestures to a short stack of envelopes on her desk, and another taller one on Jon’s. The envelopes are covered in beautifully looping handwriting. “Occasionally we receive these...statements. They all seem to be coming from the same source, or at least the same go-between. So far they’ve all been genuine cases of the paranormal. It’s how we’ve learned most of what we know about these things.” 

Martin feels something hard and heavy sink into his gut. “And you don’t know who’s behind them? Or what their agenda might be?”

Georgie huffs. “Jon insists that they’ve kept their anonymity for a reason. I...am less willing to grant them such magnanimity. But Jon can be very stubborn about these things, and I doubt that he could let them go now even if he wanted to.” She clicks her tongue. “Half the time I could believe the ink was laced with opium, the way he inhales them whenever they arrive.” Martin purses his lips, and thinks about all the monsters that play with their food for weeks and months and years before they do them the mercy of taking their lives. Or worse. 

Then, out of nowhere, a thought occurs to him. Because Jonathan Sims isn’t only human any more. He hasn’t been for over half a year. Human beings don’t wake up without heartbeats. Human beings don’t enchant monsters with questions. And if Jon isn’t human, then he’s feeding something, and it’s feeding him. Martin thinks of the first day he’d spent in these offices: of the presence of a great staring eye as Jon had read the latest of these statements. He feels something click into place. A spider skitters over the edge of Jon’s desk. 

“What if it’s the statements, then?”

Georgie blinks, hands full of envelopes. “What do you mean?” 

Martin is already on his feet, full of the thrill of being able to do something for the first time in nearly two days instead of sitting and feeling so powerfully helpless. He starts picking up envelopes and opening them. “The statements. What if they’re what brings him back?”

A shadow passes over Georgie’s freckled brow. “I’d like to think he isn’t so far gone -, ”

Martin starts carefully laying the letters over the surface of the coffin. As he does, he tuts. “Sure. And I would too. Believe it or not, I wouldn’t actually wish this on anyone. But if this is what he needs, then this is what we have to do.” He looks up from where he’s covering the wood with piles and piles of paper. “It could be a lot worse.” He doesn’t say that it could be bodies, or blood, or burning. He imagines that Georgie can reach that conclusion herself. 

Georgie’s mouth pulls back, but she nods and gets briskly to her feet, beginning to open her own envelopes and slip out the papers in them. “Fine.” 

It doesn’t take them long to wallpaper the coffin. Its song is barely muffled by its new paper coat, which flutters and sighs as if set upon a breathing thing. Martin steps back, and looks at the remaining envelopes on Jon’s desk. He considers adding them to the heap, and worries about the stability of the fragile structure. He wants to laugh. Next to him, Georgie stands with her hands on her hips and huffs a strand of hair out of her face. “Now what?”

Martin tries to think. There’s a letter in his hand. It begins, _ “Where do you want me to start? Growing up? My folks? How ‘bout that growth spurt when I was nine?” _ Martin recognises the words. They’re burned into his memory in a voice with too many tongues, and the handwriting on the paper is as thick and clumsy and childish as he imagines Jared Hopworth’s writing would have been, despite the fact that Martin knows he didn’t see the creature write anything at all. 

“This was spoken aloud.” Martin says it softly, letting his mind finds its way to the right conclusion. Georgie turns to him, and her eyes fall to the letter in his hand. 

“What?” 

Martin nods to himself, grip tightening around the letter, his other hand clutching Jon’s rib. “We need to read them out.” 

The fire snaps, and Martin jumps. On Jon’s desk, the Admiral shifts and growls a little, stretching out his legs. Martin takes a deep breath, and chooses not to look out the window and into the inky blackness of the night. Georgie’s mouth pulls down, and she takes half a step back. “I’m not doing that. It. It does something, when you do. I don’t know what. But it isn’t right. It isn’t safe.” 

Martin grins at her. He feels delirious, hope filling his chest like a hot air balloon, burning at the edges. “This kind of thing usually isn’t.” Carefully, he sets down Jared Hopworth’s statement and turns to the one beneath it. He looks at Georgie, not so far gone as to do this without her permission. “I really think this might work. And I’m pretty sure it can’t hurt me. What with being a monster, and all.” He wiggles his fingers, trying to wave away the tension. 

Georgie looks at him, and her face is pinched with worry and something that Martin doesn’t know her well enough to read. Martin waits, papers in one hand and bone in the other. Between them the coffin hums. After a long moment, Georgie nods once, shortly. “Fine.” She hesitates, then gestures at the kitchen with a sudden movement, hand fluttering like a small bird. “I’ll. Make the tea.” 

Martin smiles at her, and hopes it’s at least a little reassuring. Georgie nods, and walks quickly out of the room. Martin watches her go. Then he sits down, and he faces the coffin. His smile changes, until it’s more of a baring of teeth. “You’re going to give him back.” His voice is barely a whisper. The thick, reach smell of fresh earth rises to fill his mouth and nose until he can almost taste the dirt on his tongue, choking him. Martin pulls the cold in a blanket around himself, and raises the paper in his hand. He takes a deep breath. 

“Statement of Kulbir Shakya, regarding a flood that occurred around his house in Hackney.”

* * *

Martin reads through the night and well into the next day. He reads until his throat hurts and he feels dizzy. Georgie is right about the statements: there’s something wrong with them. Every one makes his head hurt. Some are written with more eloquence, some less formally, but all of them paint pictures so vivid that for a moment Martin thinks he is whichever unfortunate soul has had their tale captured in ink and paper. He feels their fear, and their anger, and their pain. He feels his own god pushing back against it, chilling his body all the way down to his bones, until he feels as if his mind and skin are becoming detached: his head racing with too many thoughts whilst his flesh cools far below what any human could survive. 

Georgie, for her part, busies herself with fetching Martin glasses of water and tea, stoking the fire, and generally spending as much time outside of the room as possible. Martin doesn’t blame her. In his brief moments of lucidity, he can feel the presence of something huge and alien and terrible, looming down above him. Looking up feels more difficult than lifting a ten ton weight with his toes, the pressure on his head increasing with every word he speaks. But Martin can feel it crawling over his skin, cataloguing every part of him. He is hyper aware of his own voice, of the movements of his mouth: the clicking of his tongue and the sticking of his lips. 

He feels like he can see the world laid out before him, and at the same time is blinded by whichever tale of horror sits in his hand, pulling him inexorably towards its terrible close. Some of the statements are annotated with the same beautifully looping handwriting as there is on the front of the envelopes. Others have Jon’s own angular letters, or Georgie’s curling hand. A few have the cramped, irregular pen of what something Martin chooses to call gut instinct tells him was Melanie’s work. Martin reads their notes, as well as the statements themselves, barely aware of what he’s saying. 

He isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but the coffin’s song seems to be getting louder. 

Day breaks, and Martin notices the light in a slow strobe from hour to hour as he surfaces from one story only to fall headlong into another. The pile in his hand slowly shrinks, and he drops each empty envelope onto the floor like the paper wrapping of a pastry. 

Martin doesn’t know how long he’s been speaking for when the papers move. At first they shiver, and then several fall to the floor, and then in a cascade they’re falling aside like a whispering avalanche as the coffin lid is flung open. Martin is wrenched out of his reverie, words tingling on his lips. In the hall, Georgie is raising her voice. Martin just stares at the deep black of the coffin’s belly, breathing in the overpowering scent of freshly turned earth. 

A dark hand bursts up out of the heap, clinging to the edge of the wood, and Martin gets to his feet, swaying. Jon’s arm follows his hand, and then there’s his shoulders, and the pale skin of another arm wrapped around them. Jon’s head bursts up out of the soil, and he’s filthy and covered in scrapes and bruises and there are tear tracks on his cheeks but he’s alive. He’s alive. 

A woman: all messily chopped black hair and clods of dirt and a snarl on her face wrenches her way up out of the dirt and collapses onto the office floor, coughing. Jon follows, and Martin catches him, dropping the letter and the rib in his hand. It falls with a clatter onto the polished wood floor and rolls under a desk covered in spiderwebs. Jon clings to Martin, apparently without thinking, and Martin feels deep in his gut and the base of his spine a resettling: the sense of a dropped anchor, rehauled and returned. Jon is breathing, deeply and painfully, coughing out clumps of dirt and mud. Martin brushes soil from his hair with shaking fingers, blinking away the echoes of the horror he’d been reading to an empty room. He doesn't - cannot - tear his eyes away from Jon, living and breathing and _here_, even as footsteps come down the hall towards them. 

Then Basira steps into the room, head covered by a deep blue scarf. She freezes in the doorway, and stares at the woman on her knees in a filthy, tattered workman’s boiler suit. The woman looks up, and the snarl falls away as her dark eyes go as wide as a child’s. She tries to speak, and coughs. Basira gets there first.

“_Hello_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I have often waited. It is a particular kind of agony, one which I believe is favoured by our pretending gods. It reminds us of our helplessness, our profound lack of power to do anything about the lot so callously handed down to us by the shadows lurking behind the gold leaf gloss of the heavens. This, I think, is what Prometheus was trying to teach us. We cannot defeat them on our own power. But we can do it by stealing what is theirs, and using it to spite them._


	14. Rest Without Peace

Basira and the woman Martin’s told is Daisy leave without much fanfare. Basira stares at Daisy as if she’s a miracle made flesh, and Daisy looks at her in much the same way. Martin doesn’t need supernatural powers to know how very deeply in love they are, and he doesn’t miss the quiet, proud triumph on Jon’s face as he watches them go. Then Jon sways, and Martin catches him again. Gently, Martin ushers into Jon into the nearest chair. 

Jon sits with a wince. Martin looks him over carefully, taking in the tears in his clothes, and the long, dark red stains of wounds that have barely had time to heal. Jon, meanwhile, is staring at the office, which is covered in open letters. He looks up at Martin. “What - ?” But then his gaze shifts past Martin, and his expression softens. “Georgie.” He says her name quietly, and Martin tries very hard not to feel the cold sting of rejection as he steps aside, and Georgie hurries past him. 

Georgie wraps her arms around Jon’s head and shoulders, and curls over him to press a kiss into his filthy hair, and laughs despite the tears running down her cheeks. “You’re covered in mud.” Jon huffs, and leans into her stomach, shutting his eyes. Martin looks away. 

The Admiral presses between his legs in a winding curve before trotting forwards and hopping up into Jon’s lap. Jon sighs, and drops one hand from Georgie’s arms to scratch the cat’s ears. “Hello. Did you miss me?” The Admiral meows, and Georgie chuckles, scrubbing at her cheeks with the heel of her palm. 

“I think that’s a yes.” 

Martin thinks maybe he could have had this once. If he’d found the right people, or the right person. If things had unfolded differently. 

But as it is, he steps back into the cold embrace of his master, and lets himself fade away.

Jon is alive.

That should be enough.

* * *

Gerry looks better than he did the last time Martin saw him. Martin greets him with his best effort at a smile, and it turns into a genuine one when Gerry returns it. It’s a day after Jon had resurfaced from the coffin, and Martin is trying to remind himself of the life he has outside of Jonathan Sims. It’s not an easy thing to do, with his new column, but he’s determined not to lose perspective entirely. 

So he goes to his office: empty except for Gerry, despite it being nine o’clock on a Thursday morning. He’d half expected to be chastised, but Gerry just comes over to squeeze his arm and set a steaming mug of tea onto his desk. “I’d begun to think you’d taken an impromptu period of indefinite leave,” Gerry says, and he’s smiling but there’s a tension around his eyes. 

Martin shakes his head and sets down his bag. “I’m sorry, I got a little more involved with this most recent installment than I’d planned.”

Gerry’s expression darkens. “Are you well?” He makes no effort to hide the fact he’s looking Martin over, and Martin laughs and takes off his coat. 

“I’m uninjured, I promise. It was just ghost stories, mostly.” Martin thinks of the pile of statements on Jon’s desk. It’s nearly true. Gerry doesn’t seem convinced, but he doesn’t press the point either. Instead he squeezes Martin’s arm, then claps his shoulder. 

“It’s good to have you back, Martin.” He pauses, and glances away, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Don’t, don’t spend so long, next time?” Gerry scratches behind his ear. “A man gets to worrying about these things when he gives his journalists permission to run around the city after a cohort of lunatics.”

Martin’s lips quirk in a smile. He can’t entirely find it in himself to disagree. So instead he nods. “I won’t. I promise.” 

A little of the tension in Gerry’s narrow shoulders eases, and he lowers his hand, straightening the bottom of his shirt. It’s a beautiful thing, with a ruffled collar and flowing sleeves. His waistcoat is black and embroidered with a pattern of thorns, and his long black hair is cleaned and tied into an inky heap behind his head with a black velvet ribbon. He really is looking well. “Alright. Well. Can you start on the obituaries?”

Martin beams, and turns to sit behind his desk, picking up his mug. It’s still warm. “Of course, Mr Keay.” 

Gerry snorts. “You know I prefer my first name, Mr Blackwood.” 

Martin spends a happy day doing his work. He’d nearly forgotten how much he liked it, even the tedium of things like the obituaries and announcements. There was something soothing about writing about ordinary things and ordinary people. Deciding on the best way to express the third marriage of a pair of Smiths, Martin can’t help but feel very far away from the drama of Ghost Hunt UK and its hapless employees. It’s nice. 

Writing the column is good, too, in its own way. It’s more cathartic than anything, but Martin finds that once he starts he can’t really stop. His pen pulls itself across the paper in quick, flowing strokes until his hand aches. He resists the urge to share everything, but by the end of it Martin thinks that he’s made a pretty good attempt at capturing something of the last week on paper. He’s careful to avoid mentioning any names, especially Basira and Daisy. No one had said as much, but Martin doesn’t need to be told how likely it is that both women had found themselves on the wrong side of the law. 

He doesn’t mention Tim, either. Not by name, at least, and the ghost Martin gives to the paper is similar to the man only in the fact that he is handsome. Martin gives Sasha much the same treatment, trying to leave the spectres to what privacy remains to them. He hopes it will be enough to satisfy both the average reader and the editor himself. Though Martin can’t really imagine what will be enough to satisfy the latter, considering how little he knows about him. 

Martin finishes, and reaches for his mug on instinct. He’s lifted it to his lips by the time he realises how much lighter it is than before. Martin looks into the thing, sees that it’s empty and frowns. Across the office, Gerry laughs. “I was wondering when you’d notice. Shouldn’t you be heading home?”

Martin sets down his mug, which is cold and empty and a little stained. He looks up at the wall and the clock hanging on it. It’s well past five o’clock. Martin blinks and his stomach rumbles. The sound echoes in the empty room, and Gerry snorts. “Go on, Martin. I’ll finish up.”

Martin sets down his pen and gets to his feet, rolling his shoulders to ease the ache as he flexes his fingers. A small pile of paper sits gleaming with fresh ink on his desk. He walks around it and across the room to Gerry, whose sitting framed by his paperwork like a shrine maiden tasked with administration. “And when are you going home?”

Gerry sighs, but there’s still a smile touching the corner of his mouth. “I’ll go when I’m finished.” 

Martin nods and pulls up an unused chair before flopping into it. His mind feels blurry with all the work he’s asked it to do today, and his body sinks into the thing. “Then I’ll wait.” 

Gerry pushes his hair back behind his ear and frowns at Martin, his smile growing a little wider as a blush grazes pink across his cheeks. “You really don’t need to do that.”

Martin shrugs and smiles back. “I know. But I’m going to anyway. So you best finish up.”

Gerry glances up at the wall, not at the clock, as far as Martin can tell. Just the chipped green plaster. For a moment, his smile flickers. Then he nods and bends forward, hand curled around his pen. “Alright.” He looks sidelong at Martin. “I’ll try to be quick.”

Martin already has the lid of his pen in his mouth and the small pocketbook he keeps for his poetry in his lap. He takes the lid out from between his teeth to speak. “Take your time.” He waves the pocketbook. “I can entertain myself.” 

Gerry chuckles and nods, peering down at the papers in front of him and returning to his work. Martin watches him, and takes in the empty office, and writes.

* * *

It takes an hour for Gerry to finish, and another half an hour for the pair of them to collect their things. Martin insists on pulling Gerry to the closest pub, and concentrates hard on not evacuating too many of the place’s patrons. As a result, The Goose and Hen is quieter than it should be but not empty. Martin chalks that up as a success, and volunteers to buy the first two pints. 

The bartender is a handsome man with red hair and blue eyes who winks at him when Martin orders, and Martin is blushing and smiling when he walks back through the low rooms to where he and Gerry had settled into a table by the fire. 

He isn’t expecting to see Jonathan Sims. 

Jon looks distinctly uncomfortable, shrouded by a haze of tobacco, still standing a little stiffly. But he’s clean, at least, which is an improvement on the last time Martin saw him. Gerry is glaring at him as if his stare alone could make Jon disappear, and Jon seems to be pretending very hard not to notice. Martin doesn’t notice his smile fall until it's gone. But his steps falter, and he hesitates a few feet away from the table. 

Gerry’s gaze moves from Jon to Martin, and he gets to his feet, stepping between the two of them as he takes his tankard. “Thank you, Martin.” He raises his drink, and gently taps it against Martin’s. Martin keeps looking over his shoulder at Jon. Gerry follows his gaze, and drinks, deeply. Then he slings one arm around Martin’s shoulders. His touch is warm, and Martin leans into it without thinking. Jon watches them, and steps forward. He’s shorter than both of them, and he looks terribly small in the cramped surroundings of the pub. 

“Martin, may we speak in private?” Jon makes no effort to disguise the suspicion he directs at Gerry as he makes his request. Martin frowns. 

“Is everything alright?”

Jon looks away, and it’s hard to tell in the low light and shadows of the pub, but Martin could swear there is a ruddy flush colouring his cheeks. His fingers curl and uncurl at his sides. He doesn’t seem to have bought himself a drink. “Everything’s fine. I just.” Jon looks up at Martin, and his eyes are black and endless in the dark. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Martin swallows. He knows what he wants this to be. He wants this to be Jon, venturing into the London night just to find him and tell him what he means to him. He wants it to be romantic and sincere and awkward and true. But in the two weeks he’s known Jonathan Sims, he thinks he’s learned not to expect so much. So instead he drinks his beer, and it’s bitter and foamy and warm, and he waits for Jon to tell him what he needs from him this time. Martin already knows that he’ll go. “Alright. Talk to me.”

Jon glances up at Gerry, and his mouth is pinched with annoyance. “Do we have to do this here?” 

Gerry gives Jon a smile, and it’s sharp and cruel. He tightens his arm around Martin’s shoulders. “Not planning to take my reporter into a dark alley, are you, Mr Sims?”

Jon bristles. “I would do nothing of the sort.” He raises his voice a little, and the heavy, stained off white plaster walls of the pub absorb the noise that isn’t swallowed by the thick dark oak beams in the ceiling. Martin frowns and pulls away from Gerry, and tries not to feel too guilty at the look that Gerry gives him when he does. 

Martin steps closer to Jon, and still finds it in himself to be surprised when Jon doesn’t step away. “What’s going on?”

Jon looks at him, and Martin is distracted by how long his eyelashes are. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gerry take another drink and step back to lean against the wall, glaring at both of them. Jon shifts, and steps a little further away from Gerry, lifting one hand to Martin’s sleeve to pull him along. Martin lets himself be pulled. The pub is a warren of rooms over-filled with furniture, and the one Jon pulls Martin into is no different. There is at least nobody else in this one but them. Jon still lowers his voice when he speaks. 

“I wanted to speak to you about the letters, and what you did. Georgie told me. Martin, I think - ,”

“I’m afraid that will have to wait.” The voice is a woman’s, and comes from a place just to the left of Martin’s head. He turns, and stares, and then gets distracted by the fact that Jon is staring too, eyes wide. By the wall, Gerry stands and sets down his tankard. 

In front of them, framed by the shadows of the hall, is a woman. Her hair is steely grey, and her face is weathered and wrinkled. Her shoulders are bony but her frame looks strong, and she’s wearing a simple, practical dress. Her eyes are sharp and dark.

Perhaps most significantly, she‘s dead. 

“Are you seeing this?” Jon’s voice is barely a whisper. The woman rolls her eyes. 

“All of you can see me. Or at least, you should be able to if I remember my rituals correctly.” The woman’s eyes crease at some private joke. “And I always do.” She raises her chin, and looks over Martin’s shoulder at Gerry on the far side of the room. Martin glances back at him, wondering when he'd come in and how he'd done so without their noticing. He can’t read his expression. 

Jon clears his throat. “Who are you?” There’s a shiver in the air as he speaks, and the woman chuckles. 

“Oh, you’re a promising one, aren’t you? That’s a shame.” She says something else, but as she does her form flickers and distorts, and her words are lost to the ripple as if to a strong wind. When she returns, she’s scowling, and her features are dark with it. “Right. We don’t have long. You’re Jonathan Sims, correct?”

Jon nods, mouth still open. Martin supposes he’s never seen a ghost before. 

The woman hums, and continues. “My name is Gertrude Robinson. I was murdered.” She opens her mouth to go on, but before she can do so her form flickers again. Then she disappears.

Jon stares at the space where Gertrude had been. Slowly, he reaches out, fingers reaching for the air where she’d been as if it were a hot stove, tentative and flinching. There’s nothing there. Martin looks back across the room, and frowns. Gerry is gone. His tankard is on the table, but he's taken his bag and coat. He tears his gaze away from their empty table when he notices Jon’s eyes on him. 

“Did you recognise that woman?” 

Martin can forgive the pull in the question this time, and answers honestly. “I’ve never seen her before in my life.” The relief of answering hits him as soon as he speaks, and the tug lessens. Martin smiles a little, and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m guessing this is our next big adventure?”

Jon’s mouth pulls into half a grin, despite the frown still marring his brow. “You make it sound like we’re characters in a children’s book.”

Martin laughs. “I don’t know what kind of books you read as a child, but I think this one would give me nightmares.”

Jon shrugs, and his smile falls away. He runs his fingers through his hair. “I suppose it would. But, yes, in answer to your question. I don’t think I can ignore this.” He looks up at Martin, and a smile curls around his mouth. “Do you think you could bear another investigation? Solving the murder of a ghost should be entertaining enough for a slow news day.”

Martin raises an eyebrow. “I have a whole city to write about. What makes you think our readers want to keep getting stories about you?” (He decides not to mention the column.)

Jon’s smile softens into something gentle and teasing. “I’m reliably informed that you’re a very good writer.” Martin blinks, and blames his blush on the alcohol and the warmth of the pub. Jon turns to leave, and stops to call back across the room with a quick flash of a grin in the dark. “Besides. It’s a ghost story. Who doesn’t love one of those?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Everybody loves to read about a handsome ghost: the illusion of unreachable beauty is so much more tempting than the messy, physical, frightening reality of living flesh to learn and love and depend upon. Tim Stoker could no longer be loved by anyone, and so could therefore be loved by everyone. You were so clearly bound to Georgie Barker, and so I could not - well. It’s of no matter now. But you came to find me, and then Gertrude Robinson found us. It was tempting to blame that on the alcohol. _


	15. The Sailor in the Crowd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So hey listen here's a wild fact, I wrote this in JUNE 2019, 3 months before episode 159. So I was delighted to listen to that. [ (Proof is here!)](https://auralqueer.tumblr.com/post/188581136798/auralqueer-so-yall-know-how-im-writing-a)

“Remind me again why we’re back in Deptford?” Martin has to raise his voice to be heard over the cacophony of noise that is Deptford market on a Friday morning. That, and Jon is at least three feet ahead of him, walking far too quickly for Martin to do anything but try and keep up. Martin thinks a little mournfully of the soft fabric reins he’s seen the occasional more adventurous nanny and more exasperated working mother use with their toddlers. 

Jon turns on his heel and Martin steps forward to pull him out of the way of a burly, sunburned fishwife carrying a basket of gutted cod. The stench of it fills his lungs and Jon wrinkles his nose. “We haven’t received anything from our mysterious benefactor since the,” Jon glances around furtively, as if anyone other than pickpockets would be interested in them here, “the coffin. He’s our best lead, and this was the last place he sent us to - ergo, we’re retracing our steps.”

Martin cocks his head to the side, absently nudging Jon to the side as four men carrying a set of iron girders walk down the muddy track of the market towards the docks, parting the crowd like the Red Sea. “What makes you think they’re a he?” 

Jon flushes a little. “I think I’ve seen him before.”

Martin frowns, “What? Where?”

Jon’s blush deepens. Behind Martin, a pair of hens burst clucking from the wooden baskets they’d been kept in as a dog knocks them over. The stall holder scrambles to catch the dog and the chickens flap into the thoroughfare. 

“I see him in my dreams.” Jon mutters, then glances up at Martin. His mouth curves into a quick teasing grin. “Not like that, Martin.” He tilts his head to the side, giving Martin another quick glance. “He _ is _ handsome though.” The blush has not left Jon’s cheeks.

Martin tries to stifle the prickly, ugly thing making itself known in his stomach and lets go of Jon’s shoulders, slipping his hands into his pockets. “The most dangerous monsters often are.” He says, a little primly, and clears his throat, looking around them. The market stinks of blood and fish and wet dog and mud, and Martin really thought he’d left it all behind three years ago. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Jon’s watching him, but Martin can’t read his expression. After a moment he gestures to the tall grey wall of the dockyard in the distance. “Jared worked the docks. I thought we might begin by interviewing a few of his former colleagues. See what they can tell us.” 

Martin nods, though something flutters in his chest at the thought of going back to the docks. It’s been years since he’s worked there, even before everything changed, though he still has the scars to show for it. It’s improbable that anyone will recognise him. And a stupid part of him: the part that was raised to learn the difference between the have’s and have-not’s, is a little embarrassed to admit to Jon how familiar he is already with this neighbourhood and its various occupations. 

Jon is apparently waiting for some kind of response. Martin smiles at him without thinking and waves him on. “I’ll follow your lead.” 

Jon nods once, and marches back into the crowd. He’s going to ruin his trousers again, but Martin doubts he’ll be able to make him care. He wonders wryly whether Jon will at least let him wash them: Martin had become adept at removing even the most stubborn stains that resulted from this particular track. And they’re a lovely pair of trousers. 

He makes it about a hundred feet down the market: at the point where more general wares transition into the gutter girls’ butcher stalls, when someone shouts his name. 

It’s an older woman’s voice and it’s bitingly familiar. Martin swallows and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, walking a little faster. The mud slips and squelches beneath his shoes, and he doesn’t make an effort to avoid the rivulets of blood trickling through the dirt. The woman’s voice shouts again, louder and closer. Martin looks up, trying to spot Jon in the crowd. 

He’s almost twenty feet ahead of him, somehow. Martin catches a glimpse of his hair: dark and threaded with silver, and then he disappears again, not quite tall or broad enough to stand out against the crowd the way the dockworkers do. The way Martin does. 

Martin tries not to panic. Instead, he pulls on the fog inside of him, waiting expectantly for the cold reassurance of its embrace. 

Nothing happens.

Martin tries to swallow his panic, but it’s a breathless, scrabbling rabbit of a thing trying to jump out of his chest. People are starting to stare at him: more and more of them, turning from their work and their haggling and their children. A tall man with grey hair and a black wool coat turns a corner ahead of him, and for a second Martin thinks - but, no, that’s impossible. 

Martin tries not to shove too hard at the mass of bodies blocking his way, boots and shoes slipping in the mud as he mutters a string of breathless apologies, trying to walk faster, trying to ignore the way his face is burning, wondering whether he should call out for Jon. Above him the sky is a dizzying expanse of grey that spreads out from the narrow bottleneck of the butcher’s market into an ocean of oblivion. 

A firm hand grabs his wrist: small and bony and squeezing too tightly. She speaks in Polish, “_Don’t you dare run away from your mother, Martin.” _

Martin expects the slap; hard and stinging a bruise against his cheek. He doesn’t try to avoid it. Instead he squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them his mother is standing in front of him, one hand still squeezing his wrist too hard. Martin remembers when he was younger, and her grip left bruises on his arms. He wonders if it will again now. 

He can still feel eyes on the back of his neck, but when he glances to the side he doesn’t catch anyone staring: at least, not obviously. There’s a dog giving them a glare from beside an upended wheelbarrow, but Martin suspects that has as much to do with the sausages in the basket on his mother’s arm as it has to do with the fuss they’re causing. The smell of excrement twists with sage and thyme and rosemary and all the other things the butchers here use to try and make their offal more appealing. Martin’s stomach flips, and it has nothing to do with the meat.

“_Hello mother.” _He can’t look at her. He’s thinking about a night three years ago, a decision, and how that decision was supposed to end the ache of resentment and grief and humiliation that’s now threatening to tear his useless heart in two. Hopelessly, Martin pulls on the fog. Nothing happens. It’s not a warm day, but all at once he feels far too hot.

His mother slaps him again, and Martin flinches this time. He tries not to think about all the people around them, wondering why a grown man is standing and letting himself be manhandled by a woman half his size and twice his age. “_That’s all you have to say for yourself? It’s been three _ _ years__.” _ She starts with a hissing whisper, cold and furious, and Martin feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. For once, it has nothing to do with the supernatural. Then she starts shouting. “_You LEFT me, to STARVE to DEATH, without so much as a ‘BY YOUR LEAVE’.” _Despite her various ailments, Martin’s mother has always had a powerful set of lungs, and has never hesitated to use them. 

Now people are staring. Martin feels himself flush, not just because of the stinging heat of his mother’s hands. One man - a butcher, wipes his hands on his apron, clearly waiting to intervene. To protect the old woman from the tall young man who clearly must have done something to upset her. Of course. Martin’s eyes burn, and he blinks rapidly and consciously reminds himself to breathe. At least they’re not speaking in English. It’s a small mercy, but he’ll take anything at this point.

“_I didn’t leave you, mother. Something happened, I - ,” _Martin stops and swallows. His throat hurts. His mother doesn’t give him the chance to continue. Instead, she jabs a finger into his chest and rolls her eyes, still raising her voice.

“_Oh I’m SURE it did. Some pretty boy turn your head was it? I was right about you. You’ve always been a petty, selfish, vain little man. Just like your father.” _His mother’s lip curls as she speaks, baring her teeth.

Martin clenches his teeth and doesn’t entirely stifle the sob that racks his chest. People keep watching and Martin is sweating and his whole world is tilting around his feet and the figure of his mother in a dark dress in front of him, her salt and pepper hair pulled loose from its bonnet by the wind.

_ “Is something the matter here?” _Jon’s voice is almost perfectly even. He steps subtly between Martin and his mother, and his eyes lock on her hand, still clasped around Martin’s wrist. 

Martin feels something fragile shatter in his chest, even as he hurriedly clears his throat and pulls on a smile that trembles a little around the edges. “Everything's fine, Jon, thanks. You go on ahead, I’ll catch up.” His voice is rough and too high and he’s speaking too fast but he tries to convey his desperation when he meets Jon’s eyes. Because Martin really, really needs Jon not to see this.

Jon’s mouth immediately turns down, and he begins to frown, eyes running over Martin’s face. They narrow when they get to the - no doubt hand shaped - red marks on Martin’s cheeks.

“_So this is the harlot that turned your head? He isn’t much. But then no one with half a brain would take you. Was it for his money? Have you made yourself his little servant?” _Martin’s mother is mocking but quieter now, at least. 

“_He has nothing to do with this.” _It’s Martin’s turn to hiss. It had always been easier to protect others from his mother than to protect himself. He’d lost count of the nurses and maids from whom he’d drawn his mother’s ire: men and women who would sneak him scraps of bread and butter and fruit on nights when he wasn’t allowed to eat. Martin steps towards his mother, trying to lead her away from Jon.

Jon glances up at him, and the creases on his brow are the work of a man three times his age. “_To do with what?” _

Martin’s mother leans around him. “_Is this true? Are you a stranger to my son?” _

The growing frustration on Jon’s face dissipates as his eyebrows raise and his lips part and then his brow pulls up into a different expression and he looks at Martin and Martin really can’t do this. Because he doesn’t want Jonathan Sims’s pity. Not now. Not for this.

“_Mother, please. He has nothing to do with this. Let’s just go home and I’ll - I’ll explain everything.” _Martin tugs on his wrist, now numb under his mother’s grip, and carefully pushes her shoulder with his other hand. He feels no heat in her touch, of course. It’s not surprising, but somehow it stings anyway. 

His mother digs her heels into the mud, standing between Jon and Martin. She raises her hand, and Martin flinches, thinking she’s going to hit him again. Instead she just steps closer, raising her fist to his face and jabbing her finger at his nose. “_Don’t you dare tell me what to do you spoilt little brat.” _

_ “That’s _ _enough__.” _ Jon doesn’t raise his voice, but it reverberates anyway, shaking the air like a hand on a drum skin. Martin and his mother, and anyone in a twenty foot radius, turn to stare at him. Jon’s hands are curled loosely at his sides and the wrinkles of confusion have left his brow in favour of an imperious scowl. His lips curl as he speaks, glaring at Martin’s mother, and Martin feels like Jon’s stare is running through his shirt and skin and sinew right down into his bones. “_Why are you doing this?” _

Martin’s mother speaks, “_Because every time I look at him I see his father. Because looking at him makes my skin crawl. All I can see is one man who nearly killed me once before and another who is going to kill me now. All I see is how much I hate them both.” _

Martin doesn’t manage to stop his own sob this time, and Jon blinks and the tension breaks and his mother gasps. But Martin pulls on the fog and then suddenly it’s there, and it’s cold and sweet and numbing, wrapping around him like a lover and dripping into his veins and soothing away the tears and the ache in his throat and the burning in his chest. A man with grey hair and a black wool coat disappears into the crowd nearby. Martin looks at his mother: with her mouth open and one hand wrapped around his wrist. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

He looks at Jon, and the humiliation is gone. The pain and the worry and the fear just dissipates. And if anything good goes with it - well, Martin doesn’t remember it well enough to miss it.

The fog is ice and peace and quiet and safety. It curls around his arms, pulling him gently backwards. Martin has half a second to see Jon’s expression change: to see the anger turn to worry, and then he’s falling backwards into the light and letting his god embrace him.

* * *

Martin doesn’t know how much time he spends in the Lonely. It’s long enough to calm down, certainly. And deep enough that the streets of London have disappeared entirely. Instead, innumerable headstones poke up out of the rolling white fog. Martin walks among them sometimes, letting his fingers trail over the damp, mossy stone. 

Other times he sits on the fog that can’t quite be called ground and leans with his back against the stone, letting tendrils of cold and loneliness wash against his chest like a cool sea. He breathes it in, and feels it fill his lungs. He can half imagine it spreading into his bloodstream, the way the surgeons tell him that oxygen is meant to do. Martin feels his god creeping into every atom of his being, and it’s good. 

All the pain and humiliation of his life fades until it's an old distant wound that happened to somebody else, and not his concern at all. No one bothers him, no one comes to offer reassurance and ask the wrong questions. Here, now, in the quiet, Martin can almost pretend that none of it happened at all. 

He lets Forsaken blur and mask the memories of his childhood until they’re almost entirely hidden from his conscious mind. He gives up his worry for his mother now: the fact that he’d genuinely thought she was dead. His horror at learning otherwise, and his horror at himself and his own disappointment in the fact. He gives up the broken, weeping child that points out that she was alive and she never came. She never looked. She never wondered where he was or what had happened to him.

But that doesn’t matter now. None of it matters. Because Martin is safe, and he is alone. 

The world of Forsaken stretches out above and below and around him, white and cold and roiling and endless. Martin shuts his eyes and breathes it in and imagines himself melting into the landscape. He wonders if that’s possible. He should ask Peter. 

The entrance of another soul into this dimension is like a boulder being dropped into a small still pond. The gravestones shiver with it, and Martin opens his eyes, frowning. The fog wraps more tightly around his heart, keeping him cold and numb and protected. 

Something tugs on Martin’s little finger, like an invisible thread.

At first, nothing happens. Then Martin hears a voice. It’s a man’s voice, deeper than his, and about his age. It makes something flare and burn suddenly in his chest and Martin hisses, pressing a hand to where it hurts. The voice comes again, and Martin’s chest burns again, hotter. He grits his teeth, pulling on the fog. It rises at his command, but nothing happens. It doesn’t soothe the pain. Instead it melts away like snow under the heat of an open fire. 

“MARTIN!” The voice comes again, bellowing, though the noise of it is absorbed by the fog like cotton wool. 

Martin puts his hands over his ears and rocks forward, curling into a ball and pulling the fog over him like a blanket. His chest blisters as if it’s been branded. Martin clenches his teeth and ignores the rising familiarity in his mind: the stupid, human, hurting part of him that insists that he recognises this voice. 

“Oh, Martin, what happened.” It’s more of a statement than a question. The voice is suddenly much closer, and infinitely tender. Martin squeezes his eyes shut as the man, whoever he is, squats down next to him.

The man’s body is like a bonfire here, and Martin can feel it burning the tops of his cheeks. There’s also the terrible sensation of being watched, and seen, more than Martin has ever wanted to be. The hairs on the back of his neck lift. Martin flinches back, curling more tightly into himself. “Leave me alone!” As he says the words he _ pushes _, and he feels the fog rising at his command, washing the man back by twenty feet in a great cold rolling tide.

The man makes a soft sound of surprise before he’s carried back, and it tugs something shy and longing in Martin’s chest that doesn’t hurt at all. The man manages to grab a headstone and stop himself from being swept back further. Martin stares at him, one hand still pressed to his burning skin. 

Part of him, a part that’s cold and safe and peaceful, recognises in the man a deep and aching loneliness. He can see in the air around his slender body every broken friendship, every cruel word, every night spent quietly awake and trying not to weep. Part of Martin hungers for the loneliness wrapped around the man in front of him. He wants to dip into his memories and see what happens. He wants to remind the man how very far away he is from everyone he’s ever loved and how none of them will come to save him. 

Another part of Martin: a part that’s growing warmer and stronger the longer he stares at the line of the man’s jaw and his slender hands and the mud soaking through the bottom of his trousers, very much wants to ask him his name.

The man gets to his feet, brushing his hands against his trousers and shivering as he does so. Then he stands up and sets his shoulders back, raising his chin. He marches back through the fog towards Martin, though this time he stays a good five feet away. For a moment, the man’s resolve falters. “Your eyes -,” he stops, catching himself, and clears his throat. Martin stares at him. His hair is wavy and threaded through with silver, like the sea at midnight. “Do you know who I am, Martin?” The question reverberates through the fog and it shudders, something like disgust rippling through the air. Whatever power this man held, it didn’t belong here. 

Martin thinks, _No_. But his mouth opens and he says, “Yes. You’re Jonathan Sims. Jon. I know who you are.” Martin’s voice is hoarse and unfamiliar to him. He waits for the burn, and nothing comes. 

The man’s shoulders sag with visible relief, and he suddenly seems very small, cut against the gaping white expanse of the Lonely. He takes a deep breath, and his narrow chest rises and falls. Martin watches him, rolling the name Jonathan Sims around his mind. It tugs on something at the back of his head, but the memories are smothered by layers of ice and fog and Martin can’t break through it.

“Do you want to be here, Martin?”

_ Yes_, Martin thinks. But his mouth opens and he says, “No. I’m so afraid.” Martin doesn’t recognise his own voice. It sounds high and shaken and not at all how he feels. Martin is calm and safe and peaceful, but his voice is that of a man caught halfway between grief and terror. His lips tingle. The man in front of him, Jon, steps forward and raises his hand, reaching out as if to touch him. Martin flinches back, and he hesitates. 

Jon meets his eyes. His fingers are half curled, and he seems to be holding his breath. Martin can feel the fog pushing at him like a dog, eager to be set on its prey. He ignores it. There’s something very tight and hot in his chest but he isn’t burning anymore. Under the ice, a part of his mind that he’d forgotten is getting louder. 

“Will you come home with me?” The power is still there, in the words, and the fog shivers and eddies with it. But Jon himself glances down. It takes Martin a moment to understand his expression, it’s not fear. (_He’s shy_, a very quiet part of his mind provides. Something clicks into place.) Martin stares at Jon, trying to make sense of the storm building in his brain. Jon’s hand is still hanging in the air between them.

For a long moment, there’s nothing but an eternity of quiet and the rolling fog between them. 

Then the ice breaks, and Martin gasps, and the fog flinches back from him, and all at once he’s terribly cold. He blinks, and Jon is standing in front of him, one hand outstretched, watching him carefully as if he thinks that he might disappear. Martin’s thoughts reassemble themselves in his head and he feels the tug of Jon’s question in his mind and for the first time since he’d arrived here Martin smiles. 

He reaches out and takes Jon’s hand, and Jon’s eyes widen, his fingers slack for a moment before he squeezes back, almost hard enough to hurt. Martin’s smile gets a little bigger, and his tears feel too hot but he keeps smiling and he tries to speak and he can’t. So he nods and swallows and tries again. “Yes, please. I want to go home.”

Jon looks at him, and his eyes are dark and warm and gentle. The corner of his mouth curves upwards. Then he gestures with his free hand, and dips a playful, shallow bow. “After you.” Jon’s smile is wider when he looks up, but his hand grips Martin’s tightly and his expression is earnest. “Lead the way. I’ll follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I’ve told you how I felt about Deptford. I was reluctant to return again, but less able to refuse you. So I followed, and found my mother. She had never been kind, and she was not kind now. I had spent three years missing, and she had not once tried to find me. Her chastisement was a painful lie, and not one I desired to bear. I fled into the embrace of my god, and it soothed me as my mother never had. And then you came to find me, and it hurt, and I could not resist you anyway. No one had ever come to save me before._


	16. Safe Harbour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hey y'all this fic has FANART NOW and I am DYING please go look at it immediately and tell tumblr user subtlehysteria how awesome they are](https://subtlehysteria.tumblr.com/post/190035789363/some-sketches-from-auralqueer-awesome-magnus)

Martin’s flat isn’t really designed to be lived in. He steps out of the Lonely and into a cold, grey room and furniture covered in white dust sheets. It looks like an estate agents’ mausoleum and despite everything that has just happened, Martin blushes a little and lets go of Jon’s hand. “Just, um, give me a minute.” 

Then he scrambles to the kitchen and tries to find where the hell he put his damn matches. The whole flat is eerily quiet, and Martin can hear the floorboards creak as Jon moves a little in the living room. There are loose webs on the kitchen counter, and Martin worries his lip as he looks at them before deciding that light and the dust sheets are his first priority. 

Matches successfully retrieved (and really, how many damn spiders are there in here? He could’ve sworn there weren’t as many a week ago), Martin bustles back into the living room, where Jon’s brow tells a story of concern and his mouth one of a gentle amusement. 

Martin gets up on his tiptoes to pull down the sheet from the window, and coughs as it sheds a layer of dust. Light spills into the room, which helps a little with the dark grey twilight. Of course, all it really does is turn the dark grey to a lighter grey, since outside above the rooftops of London the clouds have pulled a gloomy blanket across the sun. Martin squints anyway. Even this weak, filtered sunlight is almost eye-wateringly strong compared the muted glow of the Lonely.

With the light, the walls transition from corpse-grey to the lovely powder blue Martin had liked so much when he moved here two years ago. He turns and begins to light the lamps on their brass branches. The yellow light warms the place further. By the time that Martin has pulled another dust sheet off the pale green velvet sofa, it almost looks like a flat that somebody could live in. Martin balls the dust sheets up into his arms and takes them to the kitchen, deciding to deal with them later.

When he gets back, Jon is still standing where he left him. Martin tries not to worry about that, and instead busies himself with lighting the fire. (Of course, there are more spiders in the log basket. Martin does his best to shake them off before placing a few logs in the grate.)

It takes a few minutes, but eventually the kindling catches. Martin is surprised to find he relishes the heat, leaning into it as the flame grows from a weak flicker into a real fire, licking across the dry wood. He hadn’t realised he was cold.

Satisfied that this room, at least, now meets the bare minimum of inhabitable, Martin gets to his feet and brushes off his hands. He turns to Jon. “Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, maybe?”

Jon raises an eyebrow. He cuts a figure that’s dark and rich against the pale pastel of the room. Martin realises that he’d never really imagined having guests here. Jon’s voice is carefully even when speaks. “Do you live here?”

There’s no supernatural pull on the question. Martin shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, as much as I can be said to live.” He laughs a little awkwardly. Jon watches him and waits. Martin shuffles on the green, flowery rug and thinks it really needs a good beating. “I’m, ah. I don’t normally have guests.”

“I can see that,” Jon says, drily. He cocks his head to the side. “Is this part of feeding your god?” 

Martin bites the inside of his cheek and thinks about it. “Not really? I think it’s more...why it likes me.” Martin gestures to the empty, dusty room. Behind him the fire pops and cracks, and outside horses clip down the cobbled street. “I never really -” Martin clears his throat and breaks eye contact, looking instead at a corner where black mould has begun to creep up the wall. “I never really had a lot of friends.” He suddenly feels very, very tired. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

Martin chances a look at Jon, who’s watching him with an unreadable expression. Martin flushes, and Jon nods, clapping his hands together. “A cup of tea would be lovely, please, Martin.” He gestures at the sofa. “May I?” 

Martin nods. “_Please_ do.” He thinks he might have been a little too enthusiastic, but it doesn’t matter because Jon gives him a flicker of a smile and sits. Martin rushes into the kitchen. The kettle, cups and tea itself aren’t a problem. He’s able to crumble his sugar where it had coagulated after weeks (or months?) of disuse. The biggest problem is milk. Martin is fairly sure the contents of the last milk bottle he’d remembered to pick up could be classified as a particularly distasteful murder weapon. He spends a few hopeless minutes rummaging without much hope, mind filling with embarrassment and self-recrimination and, worst of all, the sense that Peter had been right. That all of this was just a charade and always had been: that he could get a new flat and a new job and play at being human, but that was all it would ever be. That he’d never be a person again.

There’s a gentle tug on Martin’s wrist. He glances down but there’s nothing there. Confused, he turns back to his empty, dusty, web-ridden cupboards. And someone rings his doorbell. 

Martin feels a spike of anxiety and hurries quickly to the door. In the living room, Jon is halfway to standing, also clearly on alert. Martin holds a hand out to stop him. “Let me.” 

It takes an effort to melt into the background. A few weeks ago, it had been as easy as breathing, but now it’s nearly as difficult as the first few days that Martin had spent under Peter Lukas’ tutelage. Still, he pushes, and the cold bites but he manages, pulling on the lingering afterimage of loneliness that clings to this building like a bad smell. (It was part of why he’d chosen it in the first place - a safety net of sorts that would let him feed whether or not he was able to find the courage to leave the safety of his new home.)

Cautiously, Martin approaches the door and looks through the peephole. There’s no one there. Martin pulls himself back into reality and the fog clings to him, clawing at him like creeping vines. He shakes it off, and puts his hand on the doorknob. Cold mists over the tarnished brass. Martin twists the handle. 

A full bottle of milk sits innocently just outside his door. Martin looks left and right, but if his neighbours are anywhere nearby then they’re nowhere to be seen. He frowns, bends, and picks up the bottle. There’s condensation on the outside of the glass. Martin squints at it. It certainly looks ordinary. 

Distracted, he turns and shuts the door behind him, walking into the living room. “How can you tell if milk has been poisoned?”

Jon blinks, and says, “It isn’t.”

Martin raises his eyebrows at him. “And you know that how?”

Jon opens his mouth to speak and shuts it again, frowning. He raises one hand gingerly to his head. “I, um. I don’t know.” When he lowers his hand to his knee, it’s shaking a little. Martin’s heart lurches. 

“Right. Let me get you that tea.”

The two of them end up sitting side by side on Martin’s sofa, hands wrapped around two steaming mugs of tea, staring at the fire. The sounds of the street spill into the room from the window behind them, and the smell of firewood has at least ousted the more subtle clinging scent of dust and mould. Martin clears his throat and realises he has no idea what to say.

Jon breaks the quiet. “My grandmother was never a cruel woman. She raised me after my parents died and I - well, I didn’t really have enough friends to, ah.” Jon stops. He’s holding his cup of tea just above his lap, and he glances at Martin out of the corner of his eye. Martin doesn’t move, seized by the irrational impression that if he does then Jon will spook and flee. Jon swallows, and Martin tries not to look too long at the elegant line of his throat as he does so. “The point is that she was very distant. Cold, is the word. She had her reasons of course - we all do. But I was a child. I didn’t know what I was missing, or why. She never - ” Jon’s voice gets high and breaks and he stops. His nostrils flare and he blinks at the fire, mouth pressing into a firm line. His chest rises and falls, and his thumb runs over the ceramic handle of his cup. He drinks his tea, and huffs another deep breath, and looks away from Martin when he continues. 

“She never held me. She never really - I suppose the kindest things she said to me were when I was quiet and doing well in my studies. So I learned how to be quiet and I studied hard and I thought that somehow that would be -” Jon stops, and looks down at his mug, tracing the pattern of blue lines on the ceramic. “The stupid thing is that I didn’t really know what I wanted from her. I had these vague memories of my parents, and warmth, and they were hidden under this fog of pain and I.” Jon stops and clears his throat and looks at Martin, offering half a smile.

“The happy ending is that I met Georgie and I learned what I’d been missing and I -” Jon blushes a little, and it’s wine red on his dark cheeks. “I’m still learning. But it’s better than it was. _ I’m _ better than I was.”

Martin ignores the twisting pain in his chest as he wonders, not for the first time, what exactly the nature of Jon and Georgie’s relationship might be. Still, it’s not the most important thing that’s been said, and Martin is not so selfish as to think otherwise. “Why are you telling me this?” He speaks quietly, conscious of the fragile web of intimacy woven in the air around them. 

Jon meets Martin’s eyes, and his gaze is dark and deep and unflinching. “Your mother is a very cruel woman, Martin. But that’s not your fault.”

Martin had planned to say something, but heat bubbles up out of his chest and takes his breath away, and then his eyes are hot and his vision is blurring and he’s crying, somehow. He manages a rough, quiet, “I see.” A sob comes with it. Martin moves to stand and excuse himself and not just sit and humiliate himself in front of a man he barely knows. But then Jon’s hand is on his arm and he takes the cup of tea out of his hand, and then Jon is wrapping his arms around Martin’s chest and holding him tightly and Martin folds around him helplessly. He shuts his eyes and presses his cheek to Jon’s head and weeps. Jon holds him and Martin falls apart.

* * *

They talk long into the night. Martin tells Jon things that he’s never told anyone, that only Peter Lukas and his mother had ever known. He speaks about hiding under his bed and lying to the nurses about where he got his bruises from. He talks about the neighbours pretending they didn’t hear him or his mother screaming. He talks about the things that scared him then and which still scare him now, like slamming doors and broken plates. He speaks about some, but not all, of the terrible things he’s let people do to him in the desperate, stupid hope that it will make them love him the way his mother never had.

Martin tells Jon about the nights he’d spent awake, looking for stars in the London smog, throat sore from crying. He talks about wishing his father would appear again and whisk him away to a happier world, where his mother wouldn’t hit him with her cane and people wouldn’t tell him what a good boy he was for letting her.

In turn, Jon tells him about his imaginary friends and the adventures they’d have. He tells him about hiding in books, and sitting reading outside his grandmother’s room and listening to her snoring and imagining it was a good substitute for having her read to him. He tells Martin about falling asleep wrapped around his pillow and pretending it was like the stuffed toys the other children had, which his grandmother considered a waste of money and needless coddling besides. He tells Martin about the nightmares he’d had every night for a year after his parents died, of his parents disappearing into a terrible fog no matter how desperately he’d screamed for them. Jon tells Martin how he’d learned to cry quietly, when his grandmother had beaten him for waking her one too many times in the night. Jon tells Martin about _ A Guest for Mr Spider. _

At some point they transition from tea to whiskey, and by the end of the evening both of them are yawning and the flat feels more like a home than it has in the two years that Martin’s lived there. 

Jon drinks the last of his whiskey and yawns, and his dark eyes are wet with sleep or tears around the corners. Martin doesn’t stop a fond smile from rising to his lips. “You should sleep.”

Jon blinks at him owlishly. Outside, the street is nearly quiet and the sky is black as pitch. “Right, yes, I should be heading home.” 

Martin raises his eyebrows at him. Neither alcohol nor sleep deprivation have quite the same effect on him any more, but both are clearly affecting Jon, whose cheeks are pink with the whiskey. “Don’t be absurd. Stay here, I’ll make you up a bed.”

Of course, Martin’s guest room is covered in both dust and spiderwebs. After a brief, futile attempt to sweep them away, he makes the executive decision to give Jon his bedroom. By the time he’s finished changing the sheets, Jon is snoring gently on the sofa. The fire has settled down to a low ember in the grate, and the room is brushed honey yellow by the lamp light. 

Martin feels something in his heart soften at the image of Jon lying there, curled crookedly against the arm of the sofa like an awkward cat. He raises his voice a little when he speaks, “Jon. The room’s ready.” Jon’s response is to sigh and curl a little closer to the arm of the chair. There’s a slight dip where two of his ribs should be, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as he shifts against the cushions. Martin tries to stifle a smile and steps closer, bending over Jon and gently setting a hand on his arm. “Jon. Wake up. You’re going to hurt your neck.” Jon’s response is to let out a long sigh, and lean back a little onto Martin’s hand. Martin sighs, and tells himself he isn’t still smiling as he straightens and puts his hands on his hips. “What am I going to do with you?” Jon’s hair is pressed across his face in a mess of overlong waves, and for once his brow is unfurrowed. His lips are slightly parted and his hands are half uncurled, one hanging from the edge of the sofa as if it had dropped something. 

Martin makes an executive decision, and carefully bends down, slipping one arm under the narrow bend of Jon’s knees, and sliding the other under his upper back. It doesn’t take much effort to lift him; he still needs to eat more. Martin half expects him to wake, but Jon’s head just lolls for a moment before his eyelids flutter, and he turns and nuzzles into Martin’s chest. Jon is warm, and Martin flushes, but he holds him a little more tightly all the same, and walks quietly through his empty flat. “You really shouldn’t go falling asleep in front of monsters, you know,” he chastises, gently. 

Martin gets to his room, and pushes the door open with his back, before carefully laying Jon down on the fresh sheets. He hesitates for a moment before carefully pulling off his shoes and pushing off the stiff linen of his jacket. He’d done such things enough times for his mother, but he’s still careful to touch Jon as little as possible, nervous of the boundary he may be crossing. Carefully, Martin folds Jon’s jacket on the bedside table, and places his shoes on the floor beside it. On the other table is an oil lamp and matches, and a glass of water, in case Jon needs them in the night. He’s already pulled the curtains shut, and Jon turns easily enough onto his side on the mattress, curling into a tight ball like a child. Martin carefully pulls the duvet over him, and then lays another blanket on the bed. Jon sighs, uncurling a little. Martin resists the urge to push his hair back from his forehead. 

Then he walks to the bedroom door, and stops there, next to the one lamp that’s still lit. The room is dark, and Jon looks terribly small in Martin’s bed. But he’s also safe, and sleeping, and peaceful. That’s enough. Martin smiles a little, taking hold of the bedroom door handle. “Goodnight Jon.” Then he blows out the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _It’s strange to me that we could be so different, and have lived such different lives, and yet still understand one another so essentially. Your grandmother was nothing like my mother, and yet I think I understood you. I think that you understood me. It seems mundane, and childish, to have taken time to speak about such things. But I think I needed to remember the value of my humanity. And I could not forget yours: not when you gave yourself to me so openly, for all my monstrosity._


	17. The Fear of Falling

In the morning, after an aborted attempt by Martin to lend Jon his clothes (hurriedly abandoned, because Jon blushing in his oversized shirt as it slipped to expose a little of the dark line of his collarbone was entirely too much for Martin to handle), Jon heads back to his and Georgie’s house and agrees to meet Martin at the office.

There are two silver worms on the path outside the building when Martin arrives, and he takes the time to crush both of them thoroughly. Then he takes a deep breath and knocks on the door, brushing imaginary creases from his trousers.

Jon lets Martin in, and he finds his way into the cluttered room: thankfully now free of the coffin. Melanie folds her arms, and the Admiral weaves his way between Martin’s legs, purring. “So what were you two up to last night, exactly?”

Martin’s response is an eloquent, high pitched, “Ah.”

Jon huffs, “I was simply helping Martin deal with a little personal trouble. It’s really none of your business, Melanie.” He’s red, though, and that doesn’t help Martin fight his own blush. Melanie stares at both of them and doesn’t look particularly impressed. Next to her desk is a faded yellow door. 

Thankfully, it’s at that moment that Georgie decides to come back out of the kitchen with a teapot and three mugs. She looks surprised but happy to see Martin, and sets the tray down on Jon’s desk. “Martin! Good morning! Hang on, let me get you a mug.” Then Georgie takes in the state of the three of them, and raises an eyebrow at Melanie. “You’re not bullying them, are you?”

Melanie rolls her eyes and drops into her chair, which scrapes across the wood with a squeaking screech. “No, Georgie.”

Georgie’s mouth curls in the direction of a grin. “Good. Because we would need to have words, if you were.” Melanie clicks her tongue, and Jon directs a small secret smile at the papers on his desk before he speaks.

“We’re fine, Georgie. Melanie was just curious about my latest escapade.” 

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Melanie mutters quietly into the cup of tea she’s poured for herself. Jon glances at her sharply, sidelong, halfway through the motions of making his own. 

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.” Melanie says, sing-song, and goes back to her desk. Martin shifts his weight from one foot to another and really has no idea what to do with himself. Jon seems to notice, because he gestures to the seat opposite his desk near the fire, currently occupied by the Admiral. 

“Please, sit down Martin. The Admiral won’t mind.”

The Admiral does, in fact, mind - but he seems willing to compromise by sitting in Martin’s lap and meowing loudly about it until Martin scratches his ears. Georgie coos at him when she comes back in, petting the cat’s head and briskly making Martin his tea. She turns and presses the mug into his hand, and as she does she looks back at Jon. “I’ll admit, I’ve been curious myself.” Georgie turns to Martin, and her brown eyes are like gold in the early light of morning. 

Martin flushes a little, unsure where to start and feeling belatedly embarrassed about the whole affair. He clears his throat, searching for words, and glances at Jon when none come. Jon, apparently, correctly interprets his call for aid, because he speaks instead. “Martin became trapped in the domain of the Lonely.” 

On the other side of the office, Melanie sits up a little. “As in your god? Is that even possible?”

Martin pulls on his hair and wishes they were talking about literally anything else. “Apparently.” He looks at his hand, and imagines that it’s wrapped with dozens of threads, pulling him in a dozen different directions. “My connection with Forsaken has been...erratic recently. I’m not really sure what it means.”

The Admiral bumps his head into Martin’s hand, and Martin absently strokes him. Georgie watches him for a moment, and her eyes narrow. “So then how did you escape?”

“Jon, actually.” Martin admits, though as he does so a thought occurs to him. He looks up at Jon, who’s leafing through the papers on his desk and discarding almost all of them. “How did you do that? You shouldn’t have been able to enter that place unaided. Or at least without being pushed.” 

Jon pauses, an envelope in his hand, and looks at him. “There was a man in the crowd. A sailor, of some sort? He was nearby when - ” Jon glances at Melanie and Georgie, “When we met that woman. I approached him after you disappeared, and asked him what he knew. He said that you’d gone back to where you 'belonged'.” Jon’s mouth twists. “I asked him how I could follow you, and he said he would show me.” Jon huffs a quiet laugh, and his eyes are dark and bright with stubborn triumph. He flashes Martin a sharp grin. “I don’t think he expected me to escape, let alone find you.”

Martin’s blood runs cold and for once it has nothing to do with the supernatural. Georgie watches him, worried, and Martin wets his lips. His mouth is too dry. Next to him on Tim’s desk, his tea is going cold. “What - what did the man look like exactly?”

Jon looks up immediately from the envelope he’d been opening, and frowns when he sees Martin’s expression. “Tall, broad, handsome enough. Salt and pepper hair, beard, blue-grey eyes. Expensive clothes. Why?”

In Martin’s lap, the Admiral meows at him again, claws curling into the fabric of Martin’s trousers. Martin can’t think. The room is tilting, and for a second it looks like the faded yellow door next to Melanie’s desk opens a little. But then Martin’s vision clears. Georgie steps forward, blocking Martin’s view of the rooftops and the morning sky outside the window. “Martin? Are you alright?”

Martin nods. The Admiral hops out of his lap and presses against Georgie’s legs instead, and she crouches to scoop him up into her arms. Behind him, the fire huffs and crackles. Martin meets Jon’s eyes, and Jon’s mouth sets into a firm line. 

“I assume he was dangerous, then.” He sounds almost resigned. 

Martin laughs, and it’s high and helpless and afraid. “He’s one of the most frightening monsters I’ve ever met.”

Melanie leans forward, setting down her empty cup of tea. “What do you know about him?”

Martin looks at her. “He made me what I am.” The words are almost dull. They’d long since lost the pain they gave him. 

“What, like a vampire?” Georgie asks, frowning, and Martin snorts. Georgie looks mildly offended, and Martin raises a hand apologetically. 

“Sorry, no, not like that. No, he just…” Martin smiles, and it’s an angry, bitter thing. “He offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse.” 

A shadow passes across Jon’s face, and he glances down at the envelope in his hand before setting it down on his desk. “Do you know his name?”

Martin lets out a long, deep, shaking breath. “Peter Lukas.” He looks at Jon, and tries to brush off the trembling in his hand against the fabric of his trousers. “Whatever you do, stay away from him. If he realises that Forsaken didn’t kill you then he’ll do it himself.” Again, Martin’s mouth curls in an unhappy smile, mind full of memories of blood and shattered bone. “The _ old fashioned way_.”

Jon’s lips purse into a thin line. “And if he takes you again? Then what?”

Martin shrugs. “I can handle him.” It’s a lie, and they both know it, and Jon’s mouth pulls down into an unhappy curve.

Melanie clears her throat. Georgie scowls, and Melanie ignores her. “Not that this isn’t touching but I’m assuming all of us should avoid him.”

Martin nods, glad of the distraction. “If at all possible, yes. Peter is,” Martin takes a long, deep breath. “Peter is a very cruel man. He’ll pretend to be polite, and genial, and friendly. And he’ll still be smiling when he kills you.”

For a second, the four of them are quiet, their faces grave. 

Then the doorbell rings. 

Martin and Georgie jump. Jon and Melanie exchange a look. The yellow door creaks open again, and Melanie nudges it shut with her shoulder. Georgie looks at Jon and Melanie. “Were either of you expecting a visitor?”

Jon shakes his head, and Melanie gets to her feet. There’s a long knife in her hand, and Martin has no idea where she got it from. “I’ll go.” Her tone brooks no room for disagreement and Georgie nods, walking quickly to the kitchen and setting the Admiral down inside, before shutting the door and turning back to face the corridor. 

For a moment, all that the three of them can hear are Melanie’s footsteps. Then the door opens and the sound of the street washes into the building. There’s a quiet conversation, though Martin can’t make out the words, and then Melanie calls back down the hall. “Don’t worry, it’s only Daisy.” The footsteps return, and with them is a rough laugh. 

“Only me? I suppose I’ll have to work on my intimidation. Were you expecting someone else?” Daisy’s voice is hoarse and low and warm. Both Georgie and Jon relax a little but not, Martin notices, entirely. 

“Apparently some creature that calls itself Peter Lukas is the latest monster on the watch list.” Melanie says, conversationally, as she walks back into the room, knife still held loosely in her hand. 

Then a man is shoved into the room. He’s tall, and has a terrible branching scar that twists and coils across his neck and down over his chest like lightning. Behind him is Daisy. She has the man’s wrists pinned behind his back, and is restraining him without much apparent effort. The man is scowling, and there’s a cut and a growing bruise on the corner of his temple. His clothes are rumpled, and the top few buttons of his shirt have been pulled off, leaving it rakishly undone. There’s a dirty gag tied around his mouth. Georgie takes a few steps back, and Jon stiffens. Martin gets to his feet. In the kitchen, the Admiral meows and scratches at the door. 

“What is the meaning of this, Daisy?” Georgie asks, stepping forward - but not within a foot of the strange man Daisy had brought into her office. Daisy grunts and shoves the man down into a chair, cuffing the side of his head. He winces and she bends, revealing a handful of rope in her hands as she begins to tie him to the chair. 

“I am trying - to turn over a new leaf,” Daisy speaks as she works, huffing. The man pulls at the rope, making a muffled sound, and Daisy hits his leg before she continues. “Basira’s in a right temper about it. But I think I’m doing the right thing.” Daisy finishes and stands, brushing off her hands. Martin can’t help but notice that she has bruises on her knuckles. Daisy gestures at the man now tied to the chair. “So, here. His name’s Michael Crew. Serves the Vast.” She scratches her chin. “Has a nasty habit of making you feel like you’ve been thrown off a building. Can make your body think it too, which in turn has a nasty habit of killing you.”

“And you brought him here?” Jon doesn’t try to hide the incredulity in his voice. 

Daisy shrugs her broad shoulders. “I was going to kill him.” She meets Jon’s eyes, and there’s a flicker of gravity in her expression for a moment. “But I’ve been trying to do less of that, recently. Figure maybe some of these things are still people so.” She takes a deep breath, and spreads her hands. “I thought you could do your whole...Asking him questions thing.”

Jon blinks, and all of them stare at the man in the chair. The man in question rolls his eyes, which are as bright and blue as a clear day. Daisy raises a hand, threatening, and Georgie steps forward to stop her. “That really won’t be necessary, thank you.” Daisy hesitates, but after a moment she lowers her hand. Then she reaches into her pocket and gets out a gun, handing it grip first to Georgie. Georgie stares at it like the thing is a live viper, and Daisy gestures, holding it by its black metal barrel. “He’s a tricky one. You might need this.” Then, as if this would have been the problem, “I’ve got more at home.” 

Melanie steps forward and takes the thing, and there’s an uneasy ripple in the air that makes Martin look at her, sharply. Melanie smiles, and it’s all teeth. “I’ll take that.”

Georgie looks at both women, clearly uneasy, and raises her chin. “There will be no shooting anyone in this office. Is that understood?” For a moment, neither Daisy nor Melanie speaks. Then Daisy sucks her teeth and nods. 

Melanie gives Georgie a two fingered salute, and slips the gun into a fold in her skirts. “You got it boss.”

“Now what?” Jon breaks the tension, and Martin almost laughs at the absurdity of it. The man in the chair, Michael, looks like he's just waiting for the whole thing to be over. He does not look particularly afraid. 

Daisy shifts from one foot to another. She glances down the corridor, and then at Michael, and her gaze is terribly hungry. Martin feels the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end. Daisy clears her throat, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I should, um. I should go. Basira worries and Mike here isn’t exactly my biggest fan.” Daisy’s accent curls the edges of her words, and she almost smiles at the end of the sentence. 

Georgie nods and steps forward, putting herself between Michael and Daisy. “I think that’s probably best.”

Daisy nods, cracks her knuckles, and steps back, glancing over Georgie’s shoulder at Jon. Martin’s taken off guard by the sudden cold sting of loneliness he feels from her when she does. She offers Jon a crooked smile. “See you around. I still owe you a drink.” Then she turns and leaves. Georgie stays in the office, and they all wait until they hear the door slam. The sound echoes down the hall. 

Georgie immediately turns to the man in the chair. “Oh my God I’m so sorry are you alright?” She’s hurriedly moving to the gag tied viciously tight around Michael’s head, and he just stares at her, dark eyebrows raised in open surprise. 

Behind Georgie, Melanie steps forward, one hand hidden in her skirts. Jon walks quickly around his desk and puts a firm hand on Melanie’s shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll be needing that.” 

For a moment, Melanie glares at him. Jon meets her gaze and holds it until eventually Melanie relents, and she stalks back to her desk, sitting at her chair and resting the gun with a quiet thump on the wood in front of her. Jon watches her, and then turns back to Michael, before glancing across Georgie at Martin. “Martin. Some water, perhaps?”

Martin nods, and opens the door into the kitchen, nearly tripping over the Admiral as he hurries out of the tiny room. Martin fills a glass without thinking about it, distractedly glancing up at a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling, and hurries back into the room. Georgie has removed the dirty gag and dropped it into a nearby bin. Michael’s hands and legs are still tied to the chair, though, and Martin hesitates, standing a little back from Jon and Georgie. 

Michael works his jaw for a moment, and then he clears his throat and tugs on the ropes still keeping him secured. He glares at Jon. “Since when is the Hunt working with the Eye, anyway? It’s a little crude, don’t you think? Thought you lot had standards.”

Jon frowns. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Michael huffs a laugh, and leans forward, pulling again against the ropes before looking up at John with a handsome knife-edge of a smile. “Listen, I’ve had a really long day. So if you don’t mind sparing me the act, I’d appreciate it.”

Both Martin and Georgie look at Jon, but he just shakes his head. “No, I really don’t know what you’re talking about Mr Crew. I’m so sorry for what’s happened here, ah,” Jon looks at Georgie, and Georgie quickly continues.

“We want to untie you. Can you promise us that you won’t harm us if we do?”

There’s a sudden rush of wind, and then both Georgie and Jon are choking. Martin sets down the glass of water, and Melanie picks up the gun. Jon and Georgie’s eyes are watering, and their hands lift slowly up to their throats as if fighting some invisible force as they try to breathe. Michael looks at them both, cruelly impassive. “I don’t need my hands free to hurt you.” Martin glances across the office at Melanie, who’s raised her gun and is pointing it at Michael. Michael’s gaze slides to her too. He offers her a bitter smile. “Shoot me if you want, little soldier. See what happens. I’m sure you want to.” Melanie’s arms shake, but she curls her finger around the trigger, and Martin has no idea what will happen if she does shoot but he suspects it won’t be good, so he steps forward until he’s in both Michael and Melanie’s line of sight. Jon and Georgie are shaking and unnaturally stiff and Martin doesn’t know what’s happening to them but it looks like it hurts So he turns to Michael.

“Whatever you’re doing, let them go.” Martin’s voice is firm, and as he speaks he feels something heavy pull at his hand. He glances down, and there’s nothing there. But Michael blinks, and then suddenly Jon and Georgie are choking and sputtering and doubling over. 

Michael scowls at Martin. “Thought you were Forsaken, Blackwood.” 

Martin hesitates, distracted. Next to him, Jon and Georgie help each other stand. At her desk, Melanie has lowered the gun. “You know me?”

Michael snorts. “Peter likes to boast about his pets.” 

Martin flushes. “Right. Well, I don’t know you, but I am with the Lonely and if you don’t want a fight with me and mine then I’ll thank you to keep this amiable.” 

Michael shrugs, though it’s an awkward movement against the ropes keeping him tied to his chair. “I have no quarrel with you. Or the Eye, or the Slaughter, or even the bloody Hunt. And I’m not stupid enough to pick a fight with the Mother of Puppets. I’ll remind you that it was your huntress that dragged me off the damn street.”

Jon, who has apparently got his breath back, dabs at his eyes with a handkerchief and coughs before he speaks. “She hunts monsters. I think it’s going to,” He stops and coughs again, “Take a little while for her to kick the habit. You said - the Eye. What is that?”

Michael stares from Martin to Jon, Georgie and Melanie. “You’ve got to be kidding.” None of them laugh. Michael keeps staring, and then he starts to smile, and his teeth are bright and white and even. “An avatar of the Beholding that doesn’t Know? That’s hilarious.” He looks up at Martin. “You can’t tell me you didn’t know either?” Martin feels Jon’s eyes on him, and he shakes his head, trying to shake the feeling of being utterly wrongfooted. Michael huffs. “Come on, Smirke’s fourteen.” All of them continue to look at him, and Michael laughs again and shakes his head. His black hair falls into his face as he does so, and he blows to try and push it off his nose. “Alright. Tell you what. I’ll give you a crash course in the Entities if you untie me. I didn’t think you could cut off my circulation these days but your friend seemed damn keen to find out.” 

Jon and Georgie exchange a look, and then Jon looks at Martin. “What do you think?”

Martin wrings his hands and tries to think about it clearly. “I don’t...I don’t think we should have him tied up. He hasn’t actually done anything to us. Not unprovoked, anyway.”

“He’s also right here, but, you know, don’t mind that.” Michael says, curtly. Martin looks at him. Under the irritation all he can really see is exhaustion and a hint of fear. He doesn’t feel afraid of this man. He pities him. He imagines that if Michael had met Daisy on another day, judging by what Georgie had told him about her, he would not have survived the encounter. He’s guessing that perhaps Michael knows that. 

Jon hesitates, and then he nods, turning to Melanie. “Give me your knife.” 

Melanie huffs. “You could ask nicely.” But she slips the thing out of her skirts and hands it over. Jon takes it and moves to kneel next to the chair that Michael’s tied to, briskly slicing the ropes. Michael watches him, and his expression again flickers into simple, outright confusion. Martin wonders how often anyone has shown him mercy in his life. 

The ropes come loose, and Michael pulls his hands in front of him, rubbing at his wrists and flexing his fingers. There’s terrible red chafing on his skin where it’d been rubbed raw, and Jon looks at Georgie without saying anything. She nods and goes into the kitchen, leaving Martin, Melanie and Jon with Michael. He rolls his shoulders and lets out a long, deep breath. Jon stands, and when Michael looks at him he seems sincere. “Thank you.”

Jon nods. “Don’t mention it. I really am sorry about Daisy. She’s…” He hesitates. “Rough around the edges.”

Michael’s mouth curls. “The Hunt tends to be.” 

Georgie comes back into the room with a ceramic jar of salve and a roll of bandages. She reaches out for Michael’s arm. “May I?” The confusion on Michael’s face is like a child’s, and Martin almost looks away, struck by the indecency of gawking at such naked vulnerability. Michael wordlessly holds out his arm, and Georgie gently pushes up his tattered sleeve and begins to apply the salve. 

The Admiral pads across the room and begins to purr, weaving between Georgie’s skirts and Michael’s ankles. Michael clears his throat, and looks up at Jon. “Why are you doing this?”

Georgie tuts, beginning to weave the first bandage around Michael’s arm. “It’s the least we could do.” Michael looks at her, and his blue eyes are bright and gentle and lost. Martin can feel loneliness aching out of him like a storm at sea, growing with every passing moment. 

“How long have you been like this?” Martin asks, quietly. He doesn’t ask how long he’s been alone. He doesn’t really need to. 

Michael shrugs, and his mouth curls, and he tilts his head at Jon. “Isn’t he the one who’s meant to ask for the statement? Or is there Beholding about you too?”

“We don’t know.” Jon replies before Martin has the chance. “Mr Crew.” Jon pauses, “Sorry, we never really got a chance to introduce ourselves. My name’s Jonathan Sims. This is Georgie Barker, that’s Melanie King, and the man over there is Martin Blackwood. We perform our own investigations into the paranormal.”

Michael frowns. “I know who you are. And call me Mike. There was this Spiral thing for a while and it got confusing.” 

Jon hesitates, caught on the first half of the sentence. “You - how?” 

Georgie finishes with the bandages and quickly puts them away, looking between Mike and Jon before she goes to the kitchen. Her face is still flushed red from whatever Mike did to them, but she doesn’t look afraid. Martin supposes she wouldn’t. Mike, meanwhile, is looking at Jon like he’s either extraordinarily strange or extraordinarily stupid. 

“I mean, you’re one of the most powerful avatars of the Watcher in London. And there’s not much between you and Bouchard these days, from what I hear.”

“Bouchard?” Martin asks, and Mike looks at him, sitting a little further forward in his chair. 

“Yes? Editor of The Observer. The newspaper you work for. Do you really not know any of this?”

Martin feels his stomach fall out from under him. He thinks about meeting Gerry Keay, two years ago. He thinks about the wonder and relief he’d felt at being allowed to do such a prestigious job. At wearing his first suit to work. At feeling like he was doing something important. At getting to live a normal life. Disappointment hits him like a knife in the back, and Martin shakes his head, running a hand up over his face and hair. “Right. Obviously. I should have known. I suppose Peter had something to do with that, then?”

Mike looks at him with an expression that's dangerously close to pity. “I - yes. Word is that he handed you over to Elias as part of their allegiance. The Lukases have been tied up with the Beholding for, well, I mean long before I was in the game, certainly.” Jon looks at Martin, and Martin thinks he can almost see the questions running through his head, before he opens his mouth to ask one of his own. 

“So, what is the Beholding? Another fear?” 

Mike glances past Jon’s shoulder, through the windows at the wide grey sky that stretches up above the roofs of London and into infinity. He relaxes a little, and looks back to Jon. “Yes. The fear of being Watched, and Known, and Followed. The Eye, the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher. I’m assuming you comprehend the theme.” Jon nods, though he pales too, and leans back against Georgie’s desk. Martin takes half a step closer to him without thinking about it, and only stops when he notices Mike watching him. 

“And when I read those - you called them statements, that -” Jon stops, and Mike finishes for him.

“Feeds your god, yes. Mine likes it when I push people off buildings. Yours likes it when you read it bedtime stories. It makes you feel better, right? Stronger?” Jon says nothing, but he swallows, and glances across the room at the envelope on his desk. Georgie steps back into the room as Mike nods. “Yeah. Feed your god or it feeds on you. Ask him.” He tilts his head at Martin. “He’s been around a few years now. He’ll know all about it.”

“So, I’m…” Jon doesn’t seem to be able to get the words out. Mike’s expression crumples a little, folding with sympathy. 

“Becoming a monster? I’m afraid so. It’s not all bad, though. I mean. If it’s something you like.” Mike raises one hand to his scar, and doesn’t touch it. Martin bites down his own question about it. Jon raises his fingers to his hair and runs them through it. 

“I suppose I always was a studious child.” There’s a hint of anger in the words, and resignation, and Martin’s heart aches and Jon doesn’t look at any of them. Instead he clears his throat. “Thank you, Mike. I - That’s helpful.”

Mike nods, apparently recognising the dismissal for what it is, because he gets to his feet. Georgie, Martin and Melanie stiffen, and Mike raises his hands with his palms outward. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to hurt you.” The bandages around his wrists are fresh and white, and he looks at Georgie. “We respect favours, in my world. I owe you one.” 

Then he lowers his hands and moves to the door. When he gets there, Jon speaks, “Mike.” Mike stops, and turns back to him. Jon tugs on his ear. “Before you go. Would you like to make a statement?” 

There’s no power in the question, no compulsion. Martin thinks, looking between them, that Jon almost intends it as a kindness - for all the unnatural brightness of his dark eyes.

Mike hesitates, looking at Jon, and then Georgie and Martin and Melanie. The Admiral weaves in between his ankles, and a hint of a smile appears on his lips. Then he turns more fully, back to the room, and takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ Peter Lukas took me as his own three years before I met you. For one year, I was his. But I ran, and I thought that I had escaped him. He never came for me, but then, that would not have been in his nature. Everything I had learned subsequently, about my new nature and the world I was now forced to walk, had been by chance and experience. I chose not to seek it out. Sometimes it found me anyway. I thought I was free. Of course I was not. _


	18. A Peculiar Collection

Martin is woken at 5:17 on Wednesday morning by frantic knocking at his apartment door. For a while, he lies in bed and considers not bothering to deal with it. He has not changed his sheets since Jon stayed over the weekend, and he’s been telling himself for nearly twenty-four hours that that makes him neither desperate nor strange. There’s just something deeply comforting about the very faint smell of Jon on his pillowcase that makes Martin reluctant to exchange it for the more acrid sting of the detergent he uses instead. So he lies in his bed, and he stares up at the ceiling and the newest spiderweb in the corner of the cracked white plaster, and he wonders how long he can ignore the knocking before the neighbours notice.

It’s a cold morning, and Martin doesn’t really want to pull himself out of bed, braving the wood on his bare feet before he gets his slippers on, and bracing himself for the chill of the room itself before he reaches his dressing gown. He glances at the clock again. It’s 5:19 now. The knocking hasn’t stopped. 

Martin has just begun to seriously consider heaving himself out of his bed when the knocking stops, and he sinks back into his mattress with bone-deep relief, feeling the feathers in the cotton creak and fold beneath his aching back. And then a man’s voice calls out, low and muffled by the door, “Martin! It’s Jon. This is urgent.”

Martin briefly thinks about what he would consider urgent enough to be woken at 5 o’clock in the morning, and swiftly decides that judging by Jon’s tone of voice, this does not count as any of them. He’s neither dead nor dying nor being chased, which really should have made him wait til sunrise at the very least. Despite his irritation, Martin heaves himself up out of bed, cracking his neck and shivering at the chill of the room. He stumbles through the grey twilight to his bedroom door and fishes out his dressing gown, slipping his feet into his sheepskin slippers as he does so. Then he shuffles to the front door, rubbing at his eyes and then a little more self consciously at the corner of his mouth.

Martin considers glancing in a mirror before he opens the door and decides against it. He’ll only worry at his state of undress, and there’s not much point in that now. Without so much as a candle to guide him, then, Martin gets to his front door and swings it open to find Jonathan Sims standing in his hall. Jon is dressed, though Martin guesses that these are the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before. His hair is a mess and his eyes are pressed with deep bruises of exhaustion. In the dark, he barely looks human, all bone and shadow and bright, piercing eyes.

Martin yawns.

“Morning, Jon. What’s the matter?” His words slur a little as he speaks, and Martin rubs at his chin, thinking that it’s been a while since he shaved. Jon says nothing, and Martin glances down at him to catch him glancing away from his open dressing gown, and the bedshirt he’d been wearing, which had come somewhat unbuttoned in his sleep, revealing an expanse of skin and curly blonde hair. Martin isn’t sure whether Jon blushes. He knows that he does, suddenly hot as he pulls his dressing gown shut and clears his throat, feeling all at once like some hapless blushing newlywed. 

Jon looks down instead at the old dark wood of the hall. He runs a quick, agitated hand through his hair, and it sticks where his fingers push it in erratic waves of black and grey. “Um. I. Sorry, I know it’s early.”

“It’s funny that only occurs to you now,” Martin teases, daring in his half-conscious state, as he leans against the door frame. Jon’s mouth curls up, revealing the flash of half a smile, and he turns again to look at him. Martin relaxes under the weight of his gaze. Used to it now, perhaps. Or else convinced that there’s nothing Jon can see in him that he wouldn’t willingly share. 

“Yes, well, it was urgent.” Jon’s voice is rough and quiet, as if he’s only now remembering the fact that Martin has neighbours.

It’s Martin’s turn to smile, fond and warm. “You mentioned. Would you like to come inside?” 

Jon nods, glancing furtively down the hall. Martin follows his gaze. There’s a yellow door there that he doesn’t remember seeing before. But then Jon steps forward, and all at once he’s terribly close and Martin feels quite profoundly underdressed. He steps back into the doorframe. Jon squeezes past him. Martin takes his time shutting and locking the door in the hope it’ll be long enough for his blush to fade.

“Can I get you anything?” He calls over his shoulder. “Tea, coffee, water?”

“Coffee, please.” Martin follows Jon into the living room, and sees him standing somewhat awkwardly between the sofa and the fireplace. The curtains are still open, and reveal a view onto a slate-tiled rooftop and the empty street beyond. A pigeon struts across the tiles. 

Martin smiles at Jon, and turns to the fireplace. “Sit down, you look like you need it.” Jon does, and doesn’t quite contain the huff of relief that escapes him when he sinks into the old cushions. Martin busies himself with the fire, shaking spiders off the kindling before he lights it. Once he’s done, he gets to his feet and gestures to the kitchen. “I’ll get the coffee. I trust this isn’t so urgent that it can’t wait?”

Jon, who’d shut his eyes, half opens them and looks at Martin like a particularly exhausted cat. “No, no it’s fine.” 

Martin nods, bites back the urge to point out that perhaps instead of banging on his door at 5 a.m. Jon could’ve been sleeping, and moves quickly to the kitchen. He’d restocked over the weekend, a little overenthusiastically perhaps: after two years with no guests, his kitchen is now capable of supporting half a dozen. Or at least it will be for the next six days, before everything inevitably goes off. With this in mind, Martin makes the executive decision to make some toast in the oven and set up a breakfast tray, telling himself it has nothing to do with impressing Jon with the hospitality that he couldn’t offer him last time, and everything to do with good common sense. 

When he gets back, Jon is half asleep on the sofa. Martin sets down the breakfast he’s made on the table in front of him, and then moves forward to gently shake him awake. Jon comes to with a start, looking terribly frightened for one awful moment before he blinks and his eyes adjust and his face slackens in relief as he recognises Martin. Martin bites the inside of his cheek. “Bad dream?”

Jon looks away from him, sitting forward, and Martin takes that as his cue to back away. He doesn’t notice Jon’s hand making an aborted attempt to reach up and catch his sleeve before he lowers it, and by that point Martin can’t lean back without making things awkward. So instead he hurriedly drops a spoonful of sugar into Jon’s cup and hands it to him. Jon pours himself some tea before he speaks. “They’ve been getting worse.”

Martin studiously focuses on the bread and butter in front of him when he asks, quietly, “What have?”

Jon runs a hand up over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose, hiding his eyes with his palm for a second before dragging his hand down over his nose and lips and chin. “My dreams.” He huffs. “Nightmares, really. I think they belong to the people who’ve given me their statements in person. I think we’re...sharing them, somehow.” Jon drinks his coffee, and pauses for a long moment, staring at nothing, before he sets the cup down on the table. “It’s there, with me, in them.” He points up at the ceiling, and glances up as he does so, as if he’s checking for something. Whatever he’s looking for isn’t there, and he looks back down instead to Martin, who’s bent over by the table and watching him, trying not to look too concerned. “My...whatever it is.”

“The Beholding,” Martin supplies, quietly, stirring his tea and setting down his teaspoon before moving to sit next to Jon on the sofa. He doesn’t think he imagines it when Jon leans almost imperceptibly closer to him as he does so. “Is this why you came?”

Jon blinks, and shakes his head. He smells like tobacco, and his eyes are a little bloodshot. Martin wonders exactly how long he’s been awake for. “What - no, no, I saw Gertrude again.”

Martin stares, too surprised to collect himself. In the fireplace, the fire spits and pops. “Wait, really? What did she say?”

Jon frowns at the breakfast table, as if it contains some written note about the incident which only he can see. “It was unclear. She was...fading in and out of reality, somehow. But she said something about the avatars. Something about...collecting them. It seemed important.”

Martin considers that, letting the tea warm his fingers. “Do you think that she wants you to collect them, or that she means that someone else is?” He pauses, chewing his bottom lip. “And what does that mean - collecting us? Like, trapping us? Or taking our statements?”

Jon shrugs and sits back, bringing his coffee to his lips. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to find out.”

Martin feels his heart sink into his stomach. Somehow, these plans never ended well. “What?”

Jon looks at him, and his eyes are bright and dark and fierce. “The only way to find out more about all this is to find more avatars. Someone has to know something. Either Gertrude was ‘collecting’ them, and she means for me to continue her work - or she was trying to stop somebody else from doing the same. Likely this Bouchard figure at The Observer, if he’s with the Watcher too.” Jon huffs a slight snort, and it’s so graceless and human that Martin catches himself staring. “We should have known, really. He was hiding in plain sight.” Jon chuckles again, and Martin feels a smile pulls it way onto his own lips too. Something shivers in his chest, and it’s not entirely unpleasant.

“Alright, where do we start?”

Jon cocks his head at him, and there’s a glimmer of the same stubborn confidence that had pulled Martin headlong into this whole affair in the first place, in the glint in his eye and the firm line of his jaw. “How much do you know about the Lightless Flame?”

* * *

“I still think this is a terrible idea.” Martin murmurs, sitting at a table directly behind Jon's with his back to him, staring at the book in his hands.

“You can make the plan next time then,” Jon says, quietly, to his third cup of coffee, without turning to look at him. It hadn’t taken much effort for Martin to restrict the effect he had on his fellow diners; he suspected that it would be harder, these days, for him to drive them away than it would be for him to let them in. He’d nearly had trouble finding them both a table. 

All around them, therefore, are the quiet sounds of chatter. Cups and plates and cutlery chink and chime around the small space, and in the kitchen there’s occasionally the sound of shouting and clattering pans as the latest orders are prepared for delivery. 

The Rose and Candle isn’t exactly high class dining, but it’s not a dump either, and its patrons reflect that. All of them are fairly resoundingly middle class. Jon fits in easily, and Martin has learned how to do so well enough, though he would not have been nearly so comfortable three years ago. He has no idea whether Jon’s guest will appreciate the place or not. 

Going by what he knows of the Desolation, having this meeting in a public place will present very little obstacle to her if she wants to cause trouble. This was one of several things that Martin had tried quite desperately to communicate to Jon on their way over here. He had refused to listen to any of them, and when Martin suggested they cancel, pointed out that the coffee had already been arranged and that Jude Perry would surely punish them for standing her up. There was only a possibility that she’d punish them for honouring the arrangement. (Martin had quite vehemently pointed out that that possibility was very high, what with Jude being an avatar of the Lightless Flame, but it was at this point that Jon had apparently become very concerned about London traffic, and stopped listening to him again.)

Martin doesn’t really need the shiver in the air and the sudden wave of desert heat to tell him that Jude’s arrived. For a moment, the café falls deathly quiet, the way a dog gets silent when it realises that whatever it’s facing is far deadlier than it could ever hope to be. A dozen or more startled eyes turn in the direction of the doorway as a muscular East Asian woman wearing practical clothes and hair as short as a workman’s strides in off the street. She takes in the room slowly with a lazy smirk as she soaks in the sudden collective fear of the café’s patrons. 

Martin quickly looks down at his book. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as Jude passes random customers, occasionally making a sudden movement just to see them startle. Martin presses his teeth together and breathes through his nose. He feels Jude’s eyes on him, curious rather than hunting, as she walks past. And then she’s a few feet away and pulling back her chair with a loud screech of wood on wood, flopping down into it like a soldier and spreading her legs under her heavy grey skirt. She leans one elbow over the chairback, and tosses her head at the nearest waitress. “Did someone die in here? Could’ve sworn I heard laughter from the street.”

Her voice is rough and low, though whether it’s from tobacco or affectation is hard to tell. The effect is fairly immediate and both the waitress and the café’s patrons startle back into muted, embarrassed conversation. Martin can feel all of them shooting glances over at Jude and Jon’s table like frightened birds blindly waddling beside a pair of hungry cats. He wonders whether any of them have any idea of exactly how much danger they’re in. 

Jude leans forward on the table behind him, towards Jon, and laughs, low and rough and quiet. Martin can feel Jon bristling at his back. “What?”

“It’s just funny, isn’t it? You, a little lamb, calling the butcher to come and have tea with him.” 

Martin’s fingers tighten around the cover of his book. Jon takes a deep breath. There’s an inch between the backs of their chairs, but Martin thinks he can feel his shoulders rise and fall. “Do you plan to kill me?” 

There’s a soundless hum as the air shivers with the words, and then it’s met by a crackling curl of heat, suddenly so hot Martin can feel it burning the back of his neck. “Don’t do that.” Jude’s voice is calm and deadly. “If I wanted to I could reach into your chest like it was runny wax and cook your heart in the palm of my hand.” Martin wants to be sick. Jude lets the threat hang in the air for a long moment before she sits back, her chair creaking a little with the movement. “But I won’t. Not unless you give me a good reason. I figure I owe Elias that much.” 

“Elias - you mean Bouchard? With -” Martin can almost feel Jon’s attention flickering back to him and then returning to Jude, “The Observer?”

“D’you know any other monsters called Elias? It’s not like he’s called Mike. Always figured that was funny. The Archangel Michael, and I could give you at least two monsters in London perverting his name.” Jude sounds vaguely bored. There’s a liquid bubbling sound, and Martin has to resist the urge to look around and check that it isn’t skin. Jon lets out a quiet breath. 

“Impressive.” 

Jude hums, and there’s a sound of sliding glass across the table. “Just parlour tricks. The real thing is meant for purifying. Not much you can do with water.” There’s a grin in her voice when she adds, “Better when it’s people.”

“You...boil people.” Jon doesn’t really make it a question, and Martin knows him well enough to hear the disgust in his voice. But no fear, somehow. Martin brushes his sweating palms on his trouser legs and think he’s probably feeling enough fear for both of them. 

“Sometimes,” Jude acknowledges, and drinks the water. Martin stares at his half empty cup of tea. “So, what do you want, little Eye?”

“What do you know about Getrude Robinson?” Again, there’s the hum of compulsion. Martin nearly warns Jon against it, and bites down on the words just in time to save himself from breaking his cover. Jude moves fast enough to shake the table, and in turn knock Jon’s chair back into Martin’s. There’s a rustle as she grabs a fistful of Jon’s shirt, and the bitter smell of burning linen when she does.

“I warned you, Watcher. Do that again and I’ll burn your tongue out of your mouth.” Jude shakes Jon, and Martin’s shoulders pull up towards his ears on instinct. “Do you understand?” She spits the words through clenched teeth, and Martin curls his fingers into fists and squeezes and reminds himself that he’s meant to wait until Jon asks him for help. 

“Y-yes.” Jon’s voice is a little muffled by the awkward position, but he sounds honest enough, and after a moment Jude drops him. Jon sits, and clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Jude sounds, once again, recalcitrant and bored, like an especially disobedient teenager. Cautiously, Martin reaches for his tea. The porcelain handle of his cup is stinging with heat. “Gertrude? Irritating bitch. Dead now, which is an improvement. And I have Elias to thank for that. Which is why you’re not cooking yet.”

Martin can almost imagine the look on Jon’s face: the subtle line of his brow wrinkling as he tries to process this new information. If the restaurants’ other patrons are disturbed by Jude’s unruly behaviour, none of them make any effort to show it. They haven’t left yet either: probably wary of what unforeseen consequences there might be if they do. Martin can’t really blame them, though he does find himself wishing he’d evacuated the place anyway, decent cover be damned. 

“I don’t know Elias. Why would letting me live be a favour to him?” Jon asks, finally, carefully. There’s no hum in his words this time, and Martin can feel the tension in the air as Jude parses them before she answers.

“So an old dog can learn new tricks,” she taunts, voice lilting as she does. Jon says nothing, and she continues, “You’re his pet project, aren’t you? Wouldn’t want to waste all that hard work. Takes a lot to make a good avatar. We all know that.” Jude is sober as she finishes, almost sad. It’s hard to tell under all the heat, and with Martin’s own weakening connection with his god, but he thinks he can almost feel a subtle chill of loneliness in her as she says it. 

Jon is quiet for long enough that Martin starts to worry. It’s almost impossible to resist the urge to turn around, but instead Martin stares hard at the words on the page in front of him and doesn’t read a single one. Jude seems fairly content to sit in the silence, though Martin can hear her fingers tapping the table. Eventually, Jon speaks. “And you?”

“What about me?” Jude sounds, once again, carefully disinterested. 

“How did you end up like this?” There’s a shiver of compulsion in the words: not a pull, this time, almost subtle enough to go unnoticed.

Jude chuckles, low and deep in her throat. “Tell you what, Watcher. I’ll give you my statement on one condition.”

“What?” There’s a terrible, desperate hunger in Jon’s voice. All at once Martin can feel it: the presence of something huge and terrifying and unseen, looking down on them, its gaze almost a physical weight on his shoulders and back. The hair on the back of his neck and arms stand on end, and it takes every ounce of his resolve to resist the urge to look behind him, or up to the empty ceiling. Martin feels sweat creep down his spine, and behind him he hears Jon leaning forward. 

Jude sighs another quiet laugh, and there’s a rustling of fabric. “Shake my hand.”

Martin stomach fills with ice water. Because he’s seen this happen before, and he’s borne witness to Jon screaming, and he won’t do it again. Not for this. Not so he can trade away more of his soul to another monster. He isn’t even thinking as he gets to his feet, doesn’t hesitate to consider what kind of match Jude Perry would be for him, especially in his weakened state. All he can think of is the blackened husks of the Desolation’s playthings and how he just cannot let Jon’s corpse be another of them. 

Martin turns, and he expects Jude to look up, but she doesn’t. She’s entirely focused on Jon, and her elbow is on the table between them, hand outstretched. There’s still the terrible presence of the Beholding above them, but none of that matters, because Jon is staring at Jude like a child in a trap, eyes wide and dark and lost. He reaches out, and Martin raises his voice, “Jon, DON'T!”

But Jon doesn’t hear him. He doesn’t even look up. Instead he keeps reaching, the same distant expression on his face, and Jude is grinning and Martin can’t watch this and he doesn’t have time to stop it so he reaches for Jon’s shoulder to push him back. 

And his hand goes straight through it. 

Martin blinks, and tries again, and again his hand goes through Jon’s shoulder without meeting any resistance. And then Jon is taking Jude’s hand, and she’s smiling, and his hand starts to bubble and blister and then he’s screaming and Martin wants to put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes and block it all out. But that’s not as important as the fact that he can’t touch Jon. He can’t save him. _He can't save him. _Martin barely registers the fact he’s speaking. He doesn’t think at all about the café or its patrons or what they might think of him. All he knows is that he needs Jon to hear him. “Jon! _ JON!” _

But Martin can barely hear himself over Jon’s screaming and he doesn’t think Jon would be able to hear him through the pain anyway. Jude peels her fingers away from Jon’s mangled hand with a breathless, giddy laugh, and Jon slumps back, face streaked with tears as she gets up and walks away, pressing a charred one pound note onto the table. Martin ignores her, trying to step in front of Jon and get his attention somehow. Everything seems slightly faded, the sounds and feelings of the place muted and distant. But Martin can’t focus on that because Jon needs him and he needs Jon to know that he’s still there. 

After far too long Jon squeezes his eyes shut and blinks away the tears, frowning as he sits up. He whimpers a little as he moves the twisted, melted wreck of his hand, though he tries to bite off the sound and chokes on it. He looks around, and his frown deepens. The café’s patrons have long since escaped. As soon as Jude left, all but the hardiest beat a swift retreat, and now the waitress is standing in the corner, nervously considering whether to approach Jon or leave him be. Her eyes keep returning to the one pound note. 

Martin waves a hand in front of Jon’s face, but Jon gives no sign of seeing him. Martin isn’t sure when he started crying, but his cheeks are wet when he speaks. “I’m right here. Jon, I’m here.” Jon lifts his hand, gingerly, and Martin feels his heart wrench as he looks at it. “Oh God, what has she done to you?”

But Jon doesn’t hear him. Instead, awkwardly, he pushes his chair back and gets to his feet, swaying a little as he looks around. There’s an expression on his face and Martin can’t read it, only making out flashes of grief and confusion and pain in the dip of his mouth and the pull of his brow and the tension of his jaw. 

“Martin? Where - where are you?”

When Martin breathes his breath hitches, and he moves in front of Jon. “I’m right here. Why can’t you see me?” He reaches inside of himself and tries to find the fog, but there’s nothing there. He can’t even feel the subtle tug of threads around his fingers. 

And then a heavy, cold hand lands on his shoulder, and Martin jumps, and someone leans forward to murmur in his ear.

“Hello Martin. Long time no see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Perhaps the real cause of our suffering is our own determination to act on half-truths and unknowns, to defy the great mysteries of the world with our own stubborn bluffing. I knew of Jude Perry, there was no monster in London that didn’t. And I knew that you could not stand against her. And yet I could not refuse you anything, and I assumed that I would save you, again, as I had before. I did not._


	19. Run Away to Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: Peter Lukas is a Creep in this chapter, references to an abusive relationship.
> 
> In happier news [@subtlehysteria](https://subtlehysteria.tumblr.com/) coloured and posted MORE FANART of this fic and I am dying of happiness, please go and behold them [HERE](https://subtlehysteria.tumblr.com/post/190287948648/so-auralqueer-and-i-chatted-a-bit-about-the) and [HERE](https://subtlehysteria.tumblr.com/post/190289142333/decided-to-colour-in-these-sketches-while-i-still) and then shower them in love!

** _ Three months later _ **

It’s very cold. Martin stands on the deck of The Tundra in shirt sleeves, holding a beautifully cut glass of white wine in one hand, dangled lightly over the wooden rail. He looks at the ice. It rises and falls in jagged peaks and troughs as far as he can see, a field of tooth and bone against the inky black of the quiet sea. Above him, the stars are cold and unfeeling pin pricks of light, tiny white holes poked into the black fabric of the sky. When it’s quiet like this, he can almost imagine that he’s truly alone. 

It’s nothing compared to real solitude of course. The longer he stands there, the more he can hear. There are the quiet footsteps of Peter’s crew on the gangway, and the uneven creak and groan of the Tundra herself as she adjusts to the shifting weight of her passengers, rocking in the still, cold water. Distantly, Martin can hear a man crying. 

He sips his wine. It’s cold and sweet. 

Martin stands there for a while, staring out at the ice and sea. He isn’t sure how much later it is when Peter joins him, pressing one broad hand to the small of his back and refilling Martin’s glass with the other. His knuckles are bloody. Martin glances down at them and then looks away, back to the weird geometric shapes of the ice, glittering in the moonlight.

“Tell me again what you told me before.” Peter’s voice is low and soft as the purr of a predator after a bloody meal. But his teeth are white when he smiles. 

Martin sighs, and looks down at his glass, swilling his wine above the sea rolling against the side of the ship. The glass is silver and the wine is liquid gold in the dark. It could be some enchanted thing, the way it glows and glitters in the candle light. All Martin can make himself see is so much half rotten fruit and sugar. 

“Must we go over this again?”

Peter’s hand moves up his back to settle on Martin’s neck, gently clasping the back and squeezing. He leans in, close, and whispers, and his breath is cold on Martin’s ear. “Humour me.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “My soul and my body and my self belong to our patron, which is called Forsaken. I will not serve another, or commit such heresies as companionship.” Martin looks at Peter. “This is boring.” 

Peter leans forward, and kisses the side of his face, just beside the corner of his eye. “Finish it. For me.” 

Martin huffs. “I will not say his name.” Then he turns, stepping a little closer to Peter, still resting one elbow on the side of the ship as he looks at him. “You know I don’t care about him, I told you. Can’t we just let it go?” 

Peter squeezes Martin’s neck, and pulls him a little closer. His eyes are flat and hard as stone. “You’re not a child, Martin. You know what you did.”

Martin looks down, at the gently rocking deck between their feet. The wind pulls a kissing thread of cold through his hair. “I know, I’m sorry.” 

Peter’s hand moves, curling along the curve of his jaw and resting under his chin, lifting it so Martin meets his eyes. He smiles, and the skin around his eyes creases in a hundred sun-kissed laugh lines. “I know you are. I just don’t want you to forget it.” 

Martin opens his mouth to protest, and Peter presses a finger to his lips and a quick kiss to his forehead. Then he nods at the glass in Martin’s hand, still dangling over the deep black sea. “Drink your wine, pet.” Peter moves his hand and roughly ruffles Martin’s hair, and then he steps back and away. Martin watches him go as he lifts his glass to his lips, savouring the sweet sting of the alcohol on his tongue. 

There’s a mild commotion from below decks, and Martin turns to watch as a group of men bring a body up the stairs. It had belonged to a misguided young man who thought he could reclaim his sister from the crew. He’d been labouring under the impression that his love for her could remind her of who she had been before. He was wrong, of course, and she’d immediately reported the stowaway to Peter. Martin turns and leans back against the railing, watching the crew drop the body onto the deck. 

The boy (he wasn’t really a man, he couldn’t have been more than seventeen) had shown some kind of bizarre resistance to the Forsaken. Apparently, he was more convinced of his love and his family’s love than he was afraid of its absence. Things had turned ugly then, with Peter flying into a rage and beating him into a rightful submission. He’d kept kicking, until the boy’s body had stopped twitching, and had then commanded that his body be sent to his rooms. He was apparently finished with it now. 

It was strange, Martin thought. He never saw Peter lose his temper on land. But here, on the ocean, there was something less restrained about him. He was more openly the zealot that he’d always been, under the mask of humanity he wore with him wherever he went. He would not stand for heresy. Not here. Not on this ship. 

One of the crew rolls the boy’s body over for Peter to inspect. His face is twisted and mangled and swollen, though only half bruised: his heart unable to pump the requisite blood where it was required before it stopped altogether. His body is slender and wiry, and there’s a terrible gaping hole where his heart is supposed to be. Martin drinks his wine and watches as Peter steps forward, pressing a lump of ice into his chest, until it’s pink with the blood left in the cavity. 

After that, they throw the body overboard. Peter returns to Martin with red hands and the boy’s heart on a plate. The crew have set up a table near the ship’s wheel. The sky is clear and cloudless above them. Martin takes his wine with him and sits, looking at his empty plate and then the bloody wreck of the heart. He raises an eyebrow. “Are we meant to eat it raw?”

Peter smiles at him, and his teeth are blunt and white and human. “Tartare, love.” He reaches for his knife. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Martin shrugs, and pulls the plate closer. The blood drips onto the white linen tablecloth.

They eat it all.

* * *

“Do you know why I chose you?” Peter’s tone is playful, his voice creaking as he stretches, slow and satisfied. The bed groans under the movement, and the mattress whispers and shifts. The Tundra rocks them gently in her belly, resting quietly on a calm sea. 

Martin stares up at the ship’s wooden bones. “No.” He adds no inflection. Peter turns onto his side to look at him. 

His body is scarred and scattered with blue ink, staining the ropes of his muscles where they roll under his skin. If he wasn’t so pale, he’d be the picture of a sailor. As it is, he almost looks human. “Do you want to know?”

Martin shifts, shrugging against the sheets. The movement prickles as it pulls at the newly healed skin of his back. That can’t be helped. Peter had been eager to remind him of his loyalties, early in their voyage, and Martin had strayed far enough from their god to heal slowly. He speaks quietly, as if doing so more loudly will shake the shadows of the night away and leave them both exposed. “Tell me.”

Peter’s smile is a white flash in the dark , and he rolls onto his back. He speaks with relish, like he’s talking about some delicious food or drink and not the man in bed beside him. “It’s because you still have hope.” Martin frowns, and Peter turns over with one finger raised, eyes glittering with the creases of his smile. “You do. You don’t want to. You never wanted to. You were clever enough to know early on, well before you met any real monsters, that it wouldn’t do you any good. But it kept on anyway, one stubborn little spark.” Peter reaches out, running his fingers through the hair on Martin’s chest and splaying his hand above his rib cage, pressing a little over his heart. When Martin looks at him, Peter’s eyes are dark and hungry. His voice is low when he adds, “Every moment you’re tearing yourself apart. The part of you that wants to believe help is coming -” Peter’s hand moves, sliding up to rest gently on Martin’s throat. Martin lies still. “And the part that knows it never will.”

Then Peter kisses him, and Martin shuts his eyes.

* * *

Peter is gone when they finally return to port. It’s not really a surprise. Martin sits up in bed, letting the sheets pool around his waist. They’re far more expensive than anything he could have afforded before. There was a time when that alone would have been enough to impress him. 

Distantly, muffled not just by the wood but the fog that clings to The Tundra like an icy cloak, Martin can hear the sounds of the docks. There’s shouting and dogs barking, ship’s horns and hammers on metal. The clatter and clutter of London.

Martin frowns. He can already feel a headache growing in the corners of his temples.

The fog is not enough to suppress the smell, either. The cold, clean, salty bite of the Arctic Sea is gone now. Instead it’s replaced with the fumes and silt and excrement of the Thames, making its sluggish way towards the ocean. Martin wrinkles his nose.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been gone. It could have been years, or days, or weeks. The quiet wastes of the ice feel decades and continents away now, the memory of them in his mind is as elusive as a dream. 

Martin pushes one hand over his shoulder, running his fingers over the new ridges on his back.

Not a dream, then. But it didn’t feel quite real either. Not real in the way this smell was, or the random cacophony of real life outside. Even now, the Tundra felt strangely still - like a prop on a stage, not a ship built for storms and the sea. 

Martin sighs. He’s about to get to his feet and start getting dressed when there’s a soft knock on the door. Martin doesn’t bother telling whoever it is to come in. After a moment, they open the door anyway. 

It’s the sister of the boy they’d murdered in the North. Her hair is mousy brown and her eyes are blank and grey. There’s no expression on her face. One of Peter’s little jokes. 

Martin pulls up the ridiculous sheets to cover a little more of his bare chest, feeling absurdly like some spurned mistress. Though he supposed in light of what Peter had seen fit to tell him about his relationship with Elias (sweating and naked in the night, with Martin in his arms and the feeling of being watched prickling on his neck) - it’s not that far from the truth.

“Peter says he’ll see you soon.” The girl’s voice is a monotone. 

Martin huffs. “Is that all?”

The girl nods, turns and leaves, shutting the door behind her. Martin watches her go. She can’t have been older than her brother. 

He gets up and walks to the dresser, where there’s a neatly folded pile of clothes more expensive than anything he’d ever worn before he met Peter. Martin doesn’t bother to check for spiders. They’d stopped falling out of his shirts and trousers barely a month into the journey. (He’d been purified, Peter said, in one of his more whimsical moods. Martin hadn’t asked.) 

Martin pulls his clothes on. He has nothing else, and he doesn’t bother to make the bed. He does check the desk, though. Peter hasn’t left a note. He never does. 

Martin takes one last look at the cabin, and then he turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back after that. 

* * *

London is dreary in comparison to the tundra. The buildings crowd in over Martin and block out the sky, and he misses the wide stretching expanse of the stars. He wonders whether Michael Crew would take him back there, some time. He quickly dismisses the thought - Mike, no, Crew, had been on good terms with Martin's former associates the last time he saw them. Best to avoid them altogether.

It doesn’t help that it’s dark. Night in London is different to night time in the Arctic: it’s busier, denser somehow. If midnight on the ship had been like falling through deep water, walking down London’s empty growling streets at midnight is like climbing into the narrow depths of a pressing cave. 

Martin grew up on these streets. He used to find the looming buildings and heavy soot-ridden air comforting, in their own way: a blanket of ash and brick dust and shadow that hid him from the naked eyes of the world. But ever since Peter had first taken him away, he’s found them cloying. Even the chorus of lonely hearts locked away in the houses and alleyways and gutters of the city do little to soothe his discomfort. 

In a word: Martin feels trapped.

He pushes his hands deeper into his pockets, despite the fact that he can no longer feel the warmth of them, and hunches his shoulders, hurrying on down the rain soaked pavement.

No one bothers him as he goes, Martin has never been small, and now as an adult he looms over even the most intrepid of pickpockets. There’s that, and the fact the ice crunches beneath his boots with every step he takes, leaving a glittering trail of broken glass on the pavement that serves as well as any poisonous spines to keep people away. 

Eventually, Martin reaches his destination. By the time he does it’s well past midnight, though the London smog easily suffocates the stars. The moon makes her way weakly through the thinner grey veils of cloud wrapped around her, but Martin imagines that tonight is black enough for even the People’s Church to enjoy. It will suffice for what he needs to do, but he steps into an alley anyway, slipping into the icy embrace of his god. 

London is at once more distant and less solid. It’s a relief. Fog curls around Martin like a loving pet, slithering over his arms and neck and deepening the chill that clings to his skin. Martin shuts his eyes. Then he slips a small silver key out of his pocket, and walks back onto the street. He checks both ways, and cannot even make out the faint ghosts of people walking in the real world. He goes to the front door of the building he’s stopped in front of and hesitates, paying careful attention to the hairs on the back of his neck. He waits for the feeling of being watched. 

It doesn’t come. 

Martin slips the key into the door and turns it, pushing the tall black lacquered door open. It swings back silently to reveal a wide marble foyer, with black and white mosaic tiles in the shape of almonds and circles and ovals that Martin had once thought of as an eccentric design choice. Now he can see them for the hundreds and hundreds of eyes that they are: dead and devouring, staring up at the huge stylised bronze eye that engulfs the ceiling. Martin cranes his head to look at it. It stares back down at him, gilded ridges catching the faint light of the oil lamps outside that Martin has let into the shadowed hall. 

Martin shuts the door quickly, pressing his hand to the smooth lacquered wood and pushing the door closed gently, listening for the quiet click of the latch. The hall falls into darkness. Martin walks forward, and does not think about the eyes on which he’s treading.

Instead, he walks down the hall and then down a flight of stairs, his shoes making almost no sound on the polished stone floor. His breath puffs out in clouds of ice ahead of him.

Eventually, Martin reaches his destination. He turns right; and puts his hand on the door handle, swinging the door open wide. The hinges creak.

In the room beyond, there’s a thump, and the bray of a wooden desk sliding forward. In the quiet that follows, someone swears, whispering and vehement. 

Martin blinks, waiting for his eyes to adjust as he stares into the empty belly of his office. The green walls are almost black in the dark. He hears the rustle of fabric, and sees a shape resolve itself into the figure of a tall man. He’s holding a gun. The metal of the barrel catches a sliver of moonlight that’s made its way through the high windows.

“Whatever the fuck you are, I’m giving you one warning. Get back or I shoot.”

Martin starts. “_Gerry?” _

There’s a rustle, and then the scratch and fizz of a match being lit. Gerry Keay holds up his oil lamp, and stares across the gulf of desks and shadow between them. “Martin! Where the hell have you been?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I am a monster. I’m not sure how often you remember that. I have done terrible things. I have done terrible things and enjoyed them, though I have regretted them later, as one might a feast over vomit in the morning, or spirits over the memory of what one had done under their influence. I am deeply afraid of Peter Lukas, I was from the moment I met him. But I let him have me anyway._


	20. Writ Upon His Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have more fanart! The incredible [marinavermillion](https://marina-does-things.tumblr.com/) has posted [some sketches of this story's Martin, and a watercolour illustration of Melanie, Georgie and the Admiral.](https://marina-does-things.tumblr.com/post/190312284786/melanie-and-georgie-and-the-admiral-from-this) I'm so in love with all of them - please go check them out and give her a lot of love!

Martin takes a step forward, and immediately crumples as liquid fire burns through the cavities of his chest. He manages half a gasp, and then he’s folding to his knees, pressing his hand to his sternum as if it could quell the fire there. Gerry steps forward, dropping the gun on a desk as he does so. The fire reaches a blinding white heat that Martin thinks could turn even his bones to ash, but he can’t speak past the pain. Instead he drops his head, breathing fast. Even his tears feel hot, and the cold flagstones of the office floor give him little comfort. 

Gerry’s hand lands on his shoulder, and it’s like being hit with a hot brand on bare skin. Martin manages one quick high sound of pain and barely recognises his own voice. Gerry flinches back like he’s the one who’s burning, then turns and runs away from him. Martin can vaguely hear the clatter of wood, but he can’t make the sound into anything more coherent than that in his current state. He can barely see past the tears blurring his vision. 

Tendrils of fog twist and writhe around Martin’s body like a nest of snakes, but the chill air offers no reprieve. Martin’s chest just gets hotter, until he thinks he can smell his own flesh cooking. 

And then Gerry is back, and he’s grabbing Martin’s hand and pressing something polished and wooden into his fingers.

The effect is almost immediate, but it takes a few moments for Martin to collect himself enough to understand it. As soon as he held the object: a wooden pipe, engraved with a beautiful geometric web pattern that wraps seamlessly around the pipe’s stem and belly with no sign of where it ends or begins, Martin felt something wrap around his fingers. 

He can still feel it now, like dozens of slender threads strung about his hand as if he were a puppeteer. The threads stretch away all around him into the air, and Martin feels a part of him that had been set adrift suddenly anchor. At the same time, the burning in his chest recedes to a dull ache, muffled somehow to feel more like a bed-warmer under several layers of cloth. Martin breathes again, and blinks, and his fingers curl fiercely tight around the pipe in his hand. The fog is gone.

He blinks away the stinging in his eyes and looks up at Gerry, who’s watching him anxiously, eyes dark and mouth pressed into a tight, thin line. Martin wets his lips.“Where - where did you get this?”

Gerry’s shoulders slump, and he offers Martin his hand. It hangs in the space between them, not as dark and elegant as Jon’s or as tough and scarred as Peter’s. Martin hesitates, half expecting to burn. But something tugs at his chest, and he reaches out and lets Gerry pull him to his feet. Gerry shepherds Martin into a chair, and Martin doesn’t bother to wave him off, more interested in the answer to his question. Once Martin is sitting, Gerry pulls up his own chair facing him and says, “Pickpocketed it from your friend. Figured it’d do him more harm than good, and thought it could be useful, with the way you’ve been going.”

“You mean The Web,” Martin says, distracted as his eyes follow the neat intersecting lines carved into the dark polished wood of the pipe. Gerry hums an affirmation. Outside, a lone horse and cart make their rattling way down the street. Martin frowns and looks up. “Wait, how do you know about that?”

Gerry had lit an oil lamp whilst Martin was distracted, and now the candle illuminates his features well enough for Martin to see that he looks genuinely surprised. “About The Web?”

Martin tried to find the thoughts he’s dropped in his confusion. “What - no, I mean, yes - you know more than that?”

Gerry raises one dark eyebrow, and the smell of melting wax reaches Martin’s nostrils. He thinks of Jon, and Jude Perry. His stomach turns. “Uh, about as much as you, I’d say.” Gerry tilts his head to the side and a handful of hair slips loose of the ribbon with which it’s tied back. “Maybe more. Why?”

Martin splutters, “But you’re normal!” His voice echoes, bouncing off the tall walls and scattering around the desks and chairs. Both of them flinch, and Gerry’s mouth slips open. 

“Oh. You didn’t know.” Gerry shuts his mouth, and there’s a hint of humour in the curl of his lips as he sits forward, his chair creaking with the movement. “Wait, really?”

Martin feels himself flush, and tightens his fingers around the pipe in case it burns. “Well, yes really. Know what?” He’s not panicking, not really. He knows Gerry and, more importantly, he trusts Gerry. Gerry isn’t going to turn into a monster, and even if he did, he wouldn’t hurt Martin. Probably. 

Gerry sighs and sits back in his chair, reaching up to pull his hair loose and then run his hands back through it, shutting his eyes for a moment. Then he rests his elbows on his thighs and clasps his hands loosely between his knees as he leans forward. “So I’m a book.”

Martin chokes on his own saliva. “I’m sorry?”

Gerry continues as if he hadn’t said anything, but gives him a flash of a smile as he does. “Well, I’m sort of a book. Technically I'm dead. But I’m also not - it’s complicated. Basically I made a deal with you-know-who.” Gerry gestures at their surroundings. The Observer’s office gleams in the dark, polished wood and ink pots catching the light of Gerry’s candle. “Under difficult circumstances. And, ah, now I’m trapped in undeath and bound to serve him.”

Martin fights through the thicket of revelations Gerry has just presented and finds the most pressing. He stiffens, sitting up a little straighter. “You work for Elias?” 

A muscle in the side of Gerry’s jaw twitches. “Yes and no. I do, but not willingly.”

Martin puts one hand on his knee, getting ready to stand. “I should...” He bites the inside of his cheek, and ignores the altogether ordinary mess of disappointment and betrayal twisting in his chest. “Sorry, I should go.” He stands up. 

“Wait, Martin, no.” Gerry doesn’t raise his voice, too conscious of listening ears in the dark, but his whisper hisses with its urgency. He gets to his feet too, and rests a hand on Martin’s arm. Martin resists the urge to pull away, and meets Gerry’s eyes. Gerry’s brow is pulled into a mess of wrinkles, and his shirt isn’t faring much better. Martin knows that means he’s been in a bad mood and wants to believe that it’s at least partly because of him. But. Martin glances towards the door - still hanging open onto the grey twilight of the corridor beyond. 

Gerry’s hand squeezes Martin’s arm. “Look at me.” Martin looks up. The corners of Gerry’s eyes are tight. “I’m not on his side, alright? I’m -” Gerry hesitates, gaze flickering over Martin’s face. “I’m with you. I swear, Martin, I’m with you.”

The muffled heat in Martin’s chest burns brighter. Martin clenches his teeth and thinks of his mother. “Why should I believe you?”

Gerry’s hand on Martin’s arm slackens, and he stares at him for a moment before his jaw sets in a firm line. “Because you’re the only friend I’ve ever had.” 

Martin doesn’t need the sudden increase in the fire in his chest to know Gerry’s telling the truth. There’s a slight lag between the burning and the muffling effect; and Martin huffs. 

Gerry’s eyes tighten, and he lowers his hand, stepping back and looking down at the polished floor. “If - if you still want to leave, I won’t stop you.” 

His shoulders are slightly hunched, and his hands are curled into loose half fists at his sides. Martin recognises the posture - he’s worn it himself often enough, waiting for a slap or a cruel word from his mother. It’s that, he thinks, more than anything that makes him step forward and embrace Gerry in a tight, fierce hug. 

Gerry lets out a surprised breath of air, standing stiff in Martin’s arms for a moment. Martin doesn’t let go. Instead he presses his cheek into Gerry’s shoulder and squeezes him tightly. “You’re my best friend. You know that?”

Gerry laughs once, and it’s a thick, rough sound. Then he folds, bringing his arms up and hugging Martin back just as tightly. His shoulders shake, but he doesn’t speak for a minute. When he does, his voice is quiet and even. “You have terrible taste in friends.”

Martin laughs and pulls back, setting his hands on Gerry’s shoulders. Gerry’s eyes are red, but it’s not too noticeable in the dark, and Martin pretends not to see it. “I’m going to need you to start from the top.” 

The corner of Gerry’s mouth pulls up into a smile, and he nods, pushing one hand up over his face and pushing his hair back. “Yeah. Alright.” He takes a deep breath, and sits down, motioning for Martin to do the same. “This is going to take a while.” Gerry clears his throat. In the street a dog barks at nothing.

“My mother spent her whole life feeling cheated. She used to tell me with a kind of sneer that ‘destiny is for lords’, and I think in her own way she actually believed that.”

* * *

“Gertrude freed me, and in return I helped her for a few years. Nothing big, just researching, giving her backup, fetching things, occasionally putting the fear of humanity into one monster or another. And then I got sick.” Gerry sighs. Around them the empty newsroom is quiet and still. “And then I died.”

Martin frowns, a phrase from earlier pulled to the front of his brain. “Trapped in undeath - so Elias brought you back?”

Gerry bites his cheek and glances away from the lamp on the desk beside him at the deep shadows on the far wall. “No, that was Gertrude. She bound me to the same book my mother used.” Gerry’s mouth twists. “But something went wrong. When I woke up, she wasn’t there, just the ruins of what used to be my body.” Martin catches his breath, and Gerry gives him a grim nod. “Yeah, not a pretty sight. Police came to investigate, but of course they didn’t know how to use me or what I was. So I spent a year in evidence storage before this reporter comes along claiming he has a lead and insisting he study the book.”

“Elias,” Martin breathes. It’s not a question. 

“Bingo. Elias summons me and offers me a deal. Says he can get me out of the book and into a real body again - says he’ll even help me find Gertrude. All I have to do is swear allegiance to the Eye. To him. He had a contract and everything.” Gerry grins, sharp and cruel and angry. “There are so many things that should have stopped me. I knew who he was, I knew what he did. But I’d just spent a year in what amounted to solitary confinement and I was looking at eternity, unless I got lucky and someone burned my book. He was offering a second chance: freedom,” Gerry snorts, “after a fashion. And I figured whatever happened, me and Gertrude could take him, I just had to stick it out till I found her.” Gerry huffs a bitter laugh and spreads his arms wide. “You can see how that worked out.”

Martin processes this. “So you’re a…” he hesitates, not wanting to be insulting by picking the wrong word. Gerry catches his discomfort. 

“Think of me like an indentured servant. He does pay me, I just can’t leave. It would kill me. As far as doing what he says, that’s fair game as long as I’m willing to take whatever punishment he sees fit to give me when he catches me.” A shadow passes over Gerry’s face, but he shrugs it off, voice bright with false nonchalance when he continues. “My mother raised me pretty roughly so I can handle it. I just,” Gerry swallows, and he looks down at his hands in his lap with a stiff shrug. “Figured I left all that behind with her ghost.”

Martin very, very much wants to kill Elias Bouchard. One of his fingers twitches and he feels a faint tug on the thread to which it’s attached, though he has no idea what it might mean. Instead he focuses on Gerry, leaning forward to rest one hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry Gerry, that’s -” it’s so much, and Martin has no idea how to express that. He doesn’t try. “I’m so sorry.”

Gerry gives him half a shrug and half a smile, and the latter doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hadn’t really given up till the old woman herself appeared in that pub.” Gerry sits back in his chair, jaw tense. “Finding out Elias was the one that did it was a real kick in the teeth.” Gerry scratches the side of his face. “Must have been suppressing her ghost somehow. Far as I can tell, anyway.”

“Wait, Elias is the murderer?” To say that Martin feels out of the loop would be an understatement. It feels more like he’s been on a different planet, spinning at a different rate, and now he’s trying to adjust to gravity again. Then again, he supposes that was rather the point of Peter’s little vacation.

Gerry nods. “Yep.” He pops the P, then starts to crack his knuckles methodically, one by one. “Did it with a gun apparently.” He cracks another knuckle, and doesn’t look up from his hands. “Shot her to death.” Gerry moves to the other hand and keeps cracking. “She was a tough old bird but I guess that’d do it.” Gerry finishes, and flexes his hands, and stares down at the scuffed toes of his shoes. Martin leans forward and squeezes his shoulder.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He means it. He’s never met Gertrude – still hasn’t, not really. But she’d obviously meant something to Gerry, and Gerry means something to him. Gerry bites the inside of his cheek and nods.

“Yeah, well. “ He clasps his hands, and Martin can see his fingers going yellow-white around the edges where he’s pressing too hard. Gerry swallows, and Martin waits for him to continue. The room is thick with the smell of dust and paper and the sharp, sticking scent of ink. After a few moments it becomes clear Gerry has nothing else to say – or if he does, he won’t be saying it. Martin squeezes his shoulder again, and pretends not to notice the way his eyes are shining in the candlelight.

Instead, he returns to the issue at hand, rolling the pipe between his fingers as he does so. “So, wait. If you know Elias is the murderer, why are you here?” Another thought occurs to him, and Martin sits back, letting go of Gerry’s shoulder. “Have you told Jon? Is Elias going to -”

“Not as far as I can tell.” Gerry sits up a little straighter, attempting to smooth out his shirt without success. “He’s mighty protective of lover-boy. So unless your little watcher starts straying off the path, I think he’s safe. And investigating Gertrude’s murder is definitely straying off the path so, no, I haven’t told him.”

“He’s not my -” Gerry gives Martin a look. Martin blushes, and clears his throat. “Alright, what path? Is he making him into an avatar?”

“Can you magically force people to tell you the truth?” Gerry asks, voice light with teasing sarcasm.

“How did you know about that?”

Gerry rolls his eyes. “He’s been showing up here every morning since you…went wherever you went.” Gerry looks at Martin, and his eyes are sharp as they run over his body, visibly scanning for any changes or injuries. Martin shifts in his seat, and feels the now familiar tugging itch of the scars on his back. “You’ll have to tell me about that, by the way.”

“Mm,” Martin offers, noncommittally, and then considers the rest of what Gerry’s said. He feels his face warm with an entirely ordinary heat. “Wait, why’s he been coming here every morning?”

Gerry raises one dark eyebrow at him. “Why do you think, Martin?”

The flush in Martin’s cheeks spreads down his neck and over his chest. He knew Jon cared about him, obviously. They were friends - at the very least they were close acquaintances. Colleagues. Partners in crime. It was just. Every morning. That was…He says, intelligently, “Right.” 

Gerry softens, smiling at him. “Right.” He leans back again in his chair, and yawns. “I’ll admit I was wrong about him. I mean, he is an idiot meddling with forces he can neither understand nor control. But he doesn’t want you caught in the crossfire. I respect that. Not a lot of people in our world who care about collateral damage.” Gerry’s mouth twitches into half a smile before it falls away. Martin thinks about Gertrude Robinson, and wonders whether Gerry is too.

“It’s getting late,” he says, instead, deciding to shelve that topic for another day. “Shouldn’t you be at home? Getting some sleep?” Martin catches himself, thinking about a fraction of everything he’s learned over the last hour. “Do you…need to sleep?”

Gerry huffs a laugh, and his dark eyes are bright and warm when he looks at Martin. “Some things never change, hm? I mean. I’d say I’ll sleep when I’m dead, but,” he shrugs, and Martin tries to glare at him but doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile. Gerry’s grin widens in return, and he gets to his feet. “I should be going home. But, first, I need something.” He looks at Martin, and there’s still a hint of humour around the corners of his eyes and mouth. The candle light spills gold over his rumpled shirt and the shadowy angles of his waistcoat. “I don’t, you know, usually come here in the middle of the night by cover of darkness. Which reminds me – why were you here?”

Martin stands, too, and stretches. It pulls at the skin on his back, but it’s worth it for the relief in his aching muscles. He doesn’t feel like he’s had a good night’s sleep in three months. He hasn’t, really. Gerry is watching him, and he scratches the back of his neck, blushing a little. “I mean, I was going to try and find out who killed Gertrude. But you seem to have that in hand? So. Now I’m not really sure.”

Gerry nods, and Martin expects him to smile again and send him home. Instead, his expression grows serious, and he steps closer. The heat in Martin’s chest pulses, but doesn’t burn him. “Who killed Gertrude isn’t the mystery. She wouldn’t have fought this hard to manifest for something that mundane.”

“So, what is the mystery?”

Gerry holds up his fingers. “First: why did Elias kill her? I’ve got a good idea, but I need to confirm it. Second: why is she appearing now? It has to be for a reason. Something she wants us to stop. But since Elias is suppressing her, we’ve got to figure out what.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to try and stop the suppression? Get her to tell us directly?” Martin is thinking about Jon, and collecting avatars because of half a sentence he heard from Gertrude. Something in his gut shifts uneasily. But Gerry shakes his head.

“Take on Elias Bouchard, with Peter Lukas at his side? He killed _ Gertrude Robinson _. I wouldn’t fancy my chances against him alone, let alone with the Lukases as backup.” Martin thinks of Peter Lukas, and a young man trying to save his sister and dying, heartless, in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. He purses his lips, pushes down his fear, and nods.

“Point taken. So what do we need from here?”

Gerry walks over to his desk, and slips a key attached to a fine gold chain from his waistcoat pocket. He bends, and the candlelight paints his face in flickering fragments of light and shadow. The sound of the key sliding into the lock is loud in the empty echo chamber of their office, and there’s a soft click as Gerry turns it. Gerry opens the drawer, and Martin steps closer, intrigued.

Inside the drawer is a pile of envelopes, each addressed with the same, familiar, beautiful looping handwriting. Martin feels recognition hit him like a wave, an icy, shattering crash of surprise that sweeps over his head and washes down the length of his body. “Oh, I’m an idiot.”

Gerry reaches into the drawer and withdraws a dozen or more envelopes addressed by Elias Bouchard to Jonathan Sims, care of Ghost Hunt UK. He waves them at Martin. “It’s all in the statements. Elias wants Jon to do whatever it is he’s planning, and these were his breadcrumb trail. We just have to figure it out first.”

Martin resists the urge to point out that there’s a man-eating witch at the end of the breadcrumb trail in that story. Instead, he thinks about what’s happened every time he’s seen Jon read one of the statements in those envelopes: the crushing, transfixing weight of being watched pressing down upon every inch of him. His heart lurches, and he glances up at the ceiling. The smooth white plaster is a grey void where it meets the darker green of the walls. There’s nothing there. Martin looks over his shoulder, at the open door and the empty corridor beyond. His ears strain. He can’t – quite – shake the feeling that someone is standing outside, holding their breath. _ Listening _.

Gerry taps his shoulder, and Martin flinches back, violently. Gerry immediately holds up his hands in surrender, but Martin catches the way his eyes flicker to the back of his neck, which had been briefly exposed by the movement of his collar. “Don’t worry, it can’t see us. That little pipe of yours helps and so does this.” Gerry holds up a battered silver medallion, carved with some kind of spiral. It seems to be moving, somehow, but every time Martin tries to focus on it, it’s still. He feels nausea rise in his throat and swallows it down, tearing his eyes away. “I’ve got a few more aces up my sleeve. Also,” Gerry’s voice is light again with the false nonchalance that both of them stopped buying a year ago, when they’d started to know each other better, and which now tends to be code for _ tell me the truth or so help me, Martin_, “what happened to your back?”

Martin bites the inside of his cheek. “It’s nothing.”

“Martin.” Gerry’s tone is the kind of caring warning Martin used to imagine other people might get from close friends or family members. Despite their situation, and the shadows of the empty office around them, he feels a wave of affection rise in his chest. Outside, the first birds of the day have begun to sing, high and sweet in the dark. 

He adjusts his shirt. The tug of the material against the itch of his newly healed skin is more of a reassurance than an irritation at this point. Martin tries to meet Gerry’s eyes, and finds that he can’t speak if he does. Instead, he looks up, towards the small window on the far wall. It’s a patch of darker black in the shadows, and the candle within it is a distant amber speck, like a lone star in the night sky flickering against the cold. Martin swallows and shrugs. “It’s healed now.” The movement of the shrug pulls at the longer wounds, the ones that had taken more time to close, and Martin winces when it does. Gerry catches the expression, and he narrows his eyes. Martin clears his throat. “Mostly healed.”

Gerry’s voice is soft and low when he asks, “Peter?”

Martin nods. He says, as if it makes a difference, “Not in front of the crew.”

Everything about Gerry sharpens: his eyes get dark and cold, his jaw clenches, and his free hand curls into a loose, practical fist at his side. Martin had found it hard to believe that he could have hurt anyone, before. But he believes it now. Gerry’s voice is still quiet, though, when he continues, “Why?” His tone is flat, and his lips press into a thin line.

Martin runs his thumb up a stack of papers on the desk beside him, looking at the way they curl instead of meeting Gerry’s eyes. “A lot of reasons,” he says, quietly.

“Jon?” Gerry doesn’t sound like he really needs an answer, but Martin gives him one anyway.

“And the Mother.” Martin’s lips curl into something that isn’t a smile. “Apparently I’ve been cheating him in a number of ways.” He huffs a laugh that’s mostly an exhalation of air and anger. “I wasn’t aware our arrangement was exclusive.” Martin takes a deep breath, and looks for the courage to lift his head. He still feels embarrassment coiling in his chest when he says, “I thought I’d escaped. I – I know that’s stupid. But I thought this, here,” Martin gestures to the paper-ridden skeleton of their empty office. “I thought it was a second chance.” His eyes burn, and he blinks, rapidly, trying to dispel them at the same time as he ignores the way his breath hitches. He forces another shrug, feeling like a teenager. “Turns out I was wrong.”

“You didn’t know about Elias,” Gerry says, grimly. He hasn’t moved – hasn’t closed the space between them. The stack of statements hangs in his hands.

“I do now,” Martin says. Gerry looks at him, and then shifts his gaze deliberately to the point where Martin’s neck meets his shoulder. He clears his throat.

“Do you, um, need anything?” There are spots of pink on Gerry’s cheeks as he asks the question, and it takes Martin a moment to realise why. When he does, real relief ripples through him, tickled with humour, and he laughs – honestly this time.

“Are you offering to rub salve into my wounds? Mr Keay, I’d never have taken you for one so forward.”

Gerry’s blush goes from pink to red, even as he rolls his eyes. “Alright, alright, no need to make a big deal about it.” He clears his throat, and looks up at Martin, free hand relaxed and slightly curled. “Tell me truly, are you well?”

Martin’s teasing grin melts into something gentler, and he nods. “Yeah. I’m – well, I’m not fine? But these healed nearly two months ago. They’re just…” Martin bites his lip. “A reminder.”

Gerry’s expression darkens again, for a moment – so fast it’s hard to tell whether it’s just the flickering shadows. But he nods, and straightens, standing a little more firmly than he had been before. “Guessing that’s part of why you and your spooky colleague aren’t already in each other’s arms?”

Martin flushes. “I wouldn’t -” He shakes his head, and he feels the flush fade as he thinks about his answer. “I can’t. Peter would kill us both. He won’t hesitate this time.”

“And with Peter and Elias in alliance with each other, if you do anything, then Peter will know,” Gerry finishes, and Martin nods. Gerry tilts his head back, clicking his tongue. “God I hate them. Very well then.” Martin frowns. Gerry continues, “I think it’s time you met a friend of mine.”

Then he reaches up to the wall behind him – except it’s not a wall. It’s hard to tell in the dark, and Martin hadn’t noticed a change. But there isn’t a wall there any more. There should be a wall, there has been a wall: painted forest green, for the last two years. But now, instead, there’s a faded yellow wooden door, just above the ground. Martin can’t quite shake the feeling that he recognises it.

Gerry knocks on the wood, and the sound echoes strangely, scattered into its constituent parts against the marble floor and the distant walls. “Helen? You awake?”

For a moment, nothing happens. Then the door swings open, slowly, with an aching creak. Beyond it is pure, inky darkness, and from that darkness emerge five razor sharp, razor thin…things. Martin thinks they might have been fingers once, in the way that a piece of wood whittled into a stabbing point might once have been a tree. These fingers look whittled, and stretched, and sharpened – and they sink into the doorframe as if it were made of butter, leaving deep grooves in the flesh of it. The fingers wrap around the doorframe, and after them follows a disembodied head: it has long, flaming red hair that coils and curls in a tangle down over its shoulders. It looks like a woman, but its eyes are wrong: the pupils are pulled into liquid spirals in the blue of its irises like ink spilled in water. It smiles, and its teeth are white and even but its smile reaches far too far across its cheeks, nearly crossing the edges of its face.

“Good evening,” says the thing that Gerry had called Helen. Its voice is three different discordant notes at once, and all of them scatter in the air, bouncing impossibly in what had never been a particularly reverberant room. “I’ve been expecting you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ Gerry Keay is - was my friend. He is perhaps the closest friend I’ve ever had. It’s strange, I think, that I had to become a monster to find the person who would have kept me human. Stranger, that he was a monster himself, and kept strange company. _


	21. Yellow Corridors

Martin steps over the threshold after Gerry and the thing called Helen. He enters a yellow corridor - except it’s not yellow, except it had always been yellow, no, it was yellow but it would be no longer, no, it should be yellow and it would’ve been yellow if it wasn’t for the fact that it is yellow now.

Martin grunts, softly, feeling the corridor tilting and swaying around him, bucking more wildly than a ship on a kicking sea. (Except that it’s not moving, it’s still, he’s moving, it’s all in his head.) The sharp taste of bile in the back of his throat is hot and sour and grounding. Martin reaches out blindly for the wall, and his fingers sink into it where it’s soft and wet as pudding - the yellow-not-yellow-yellow sticking to his hand and bubbling on his skin. 

The thing called Helen tilts its head 160 degrees and giggles, and the sound is high as a chorus of little bells. “Poor thing. Your former patron would have helped you better here. The mother hates us.” Helen smiles, and her-their-its teeth are sharp and jagged as a shark’s, “we leave her webs tangled.”

Martin can’t speak. His stomach is churning and he’s worried that if he opens his mouth he’ll vomit. As it is, the back of his throat jerks whilst his stomach continues its merry revolt and the wall drips with the colour of his fingers. Martin thinks his knees buckle but he isn’t sure, the world is swimming around his head in a blur of colour. He’d glimpsed hardwood floors in the corridor but his knees hit nothing of the sort, sinking instead into long soft hair like the furred back of some immense beast. He wonders wildly whether they’ve walked into its gullet, like some doomed Greek hero.

There are hands on him, or there would have been hands on him, or there had been hands on him (Peter bare and hard and cold in the night; his mother, quick and cruel as a viper; Jon, soft and shy and warm). Martin gasps. He thinks Helen is saying something but he can’t hear what it is.

Then, suddenly, Gerry is filling his vision, blocking out everything but the oil slick swirl of colours around his head like some twisted halo. His hands are cool and firm around Martin’s face, and he hadn’t realised how hot he was but Gerry’s touch is a blessed relief. Gerry’s voice comes filtered and distorted and doubled back upon itself, slowly and persistently into Martin’s hearing. “— to me, Martin. Listen. It’s going to be alright. Take my hand.”

Blindly, Martin reaches out, and Gerry catches his hand like a net would a butterfly. Gerry winds their fingers together, and squeezes, tightly, watching him intently.

It’s like a bucket of ice water has been tipped over his head. Martin gasps again, a great shuddering aching thing as his lungs burn, suddenly expanding. The sickness recedes back down his throat to curdle miserably in his stomach. Martin blinks and the world around him sharpens. Martin has never had problems with his eyesight, and especially not since Peter Lukas made him a monster. But he suddenly feels as if he’d been walking around the world half blind, and it’s only now that he’s seeing it in all its detailed, messy reality. 

Martin can see cracks in the yellow plaster at the base of the walls on either side of the corridor. He can see the way the dark wood of the floor is whorled and stained by varnish. He straightens, feeling his thoughts settle like silt in a riverbed. Gerry smiles at him, and keeps holding his hand. A few feet away from them, the thing called Helen scowls, and it’s a horrible thing - half childish and half bestial. 

“You’re no fun.” It pouts, whirling with a twisting flash of copper red hair. “And you can only See because I’m letting you. The Beholding has no power here.” Helen tosses the words back over its shoulder, long legs eating the distance of the corridor far faster than they should have, until there’s some distance between them. Martin looks at Gerry, but he doesn’t look concerned. If anything, by the tilt of his lips he seems amused. 

“Of course not Helen. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

* * *

Helen leads them to a room that’s cornflower blue and full of plush velvet furniture and beautiful oak desks and drawers. Light comes in through a tall, lovely window painted white around the frame, and Martin’s new sight tells him that it is an imitation of daylight, and that leaving through its promising panes into the expanse of green and wide blue sky it offers would only lead into further corridors. He ignores the faint claustrophobic flutter in his chest at the thought of that; of the great labyrinth in which he and Gerry have willingly buried themselves. 

Gerry has no such concerns. Instead, he drops down onto a duck egg blue armchair with a soft huff of cushion and springs, and sets the pile of statements he’s been holding in his free hand onto the desk beside him. Martin, still holding his hand, trails closer and feels like a child. In the doorway, Helen folds her terrible hands around her arms and back. Her nails poke out like spider legs around her shoulders.

Martin clears his throat, hating the weight of silence that settles over the three of them in the unnatural quiet of the corridors. “So. Um. How do you two know each other?” It’s a question that’s idiotic in its mundanity, and Martin’s shoulders hunch as his voice - high and frail and not as brave as he thought it would be - echoes again and again around the room before it falls out of the door and goes tumbling down the corridors. 

Gerry’s eyes tighten, but it’s Helen who speaks, sinking into the doorframe at its back as if the wood were made of goose feathers. “He was in love with me, when I was not who I am.”

Martin looks at Gerry, and Gerry’s fingers slacken a little around his hand. The memory of the corridors’ effects are still sharp in his mind and Martin tightens his hold. Gerry sighs. It’s a weary thing. “That was a long time ago.”

Helen’s mouth slices open as it smiles. “Fortunately, I still remember.” She looks at Martin then, and he can’t shake the sensation that the spirals in her pupils are moving: slowly, twisting like a child’s toy again and again in an endless loop. “He was very beautiful, see?” There’s a flicker, like wind snapping a sheet, and then Helen is not something that looks like a woman with flaming red hair. Instead she is a very, very beautiful young man with tumbling blonde curls that fall loose around his lovely face, and frame the bright green of his eyes, still twisted with the same spiral. He-she-they-it smiles, and it’s the same slicing smile that spreads too widely across the man’s lovely face. 

“Helen.” Gerry’s voice is tight, and Martin glances back down at him. His eyes are shut, and his jaw is clenched tight. The man-monster looks at Martin, and gives him a mischievous hint of a much more human smile on its full pink lips. There’s another snap. The shape of the woman is a little taller than the man, and wearing newer clothes. Martin resists the urge to step back and away from it. 

“He still misses us. That’s why I like him,” the thing that might be Helen says. Martin swallows compulsively, half imagining sick in the back of his throat again. Gerry picks up the first statement in the pile. 

“Martin, can you help me with these?” Gerry gestures with their interlinked hands to another chair, near his, that Martin somehow hadn’t noticed before. It’s made up in the same blue velvet covering. He thinks it smells faintly of vanilla. 

Martin sits, careful to give Helen a wide berth, and Gerry passes him the next statement, a handful of thick paper printed with a scrawling hand. Martin looks down at it. The first sentence reads: “_Thank you for giving me the opportunity to put my words to you, and apologies for any problems that - may arise from this conversation. I will try to restrain it.” _

Martin forgets the feeling of Gerry’s hand in his. He forgets himself. He even forgets Helen’s terrible corridors. All there is are the words on the page in front of them and the fear of their transcriber, as they detail their encounter with some terrible creature upon a staircase. Martin feels a deep and endless curiosity open up inside him: something ravenous and desperate and cruel. He can no more resist it than he could fight a river or a hurricane. As it is, he can barely keep his head above the water of knowledge and sensation which threatens to drown him. The only thing he doesn’t forget is the light weight of the wooden pipe in his pocket.

Martin doesn’t know how much time has passed when he resurfaces, gasping. Gerry is watching him, dark eyes almost black in the strange twilight of Helen’s parlour. Helen is playing chess against itself, sprawled across a bright yellow rocking chair, swinging gently back and forth with a faint creak like an artificial heartbeat. “Are you alright? Sorry, I didn’t consider what effect touching the Eye would have on your reading one of these.” Gerry huffs, and his thin lips curl a little at the corner. “I suppose more of us rubbed off on you than I realised.”

Martin swallows. He can still feel fear, and fury, and madness, sticking to the back of his throat like sand. He frowns, and his head hurts. “I’m -” A terrible pressure is lifting from his head and the back of his neck, and he only notices it now that it’s leaving. Martin blinks. He thinks he might be shaking. “I thought you said we were safe here.”

Helen giggles, and it sounds like the yapping of a frightened puppy.

Gerry squeezes Martin’s hand, and his fingers are long and soft and cool. “Not exactly. Nowhere is safe. We’re hidden from - ” Gerry hesitates, “we’re hidden from our editor. But not his god. We’d need a far more drastic measure for that.”

The rocking chair tilts forward a little too fast as Helen leans closer: nostrils flared like a predator. It tilts its head, and blood red hair falls over its slender sloping shoulders. “You would have to step into the real corridors. Not just these paltry suburbs.”

Martin thinks of the nauseating, dizzying effect of entering this place unprotected, and considers the idea that it is some diluted version of itself. He tries to imagine a more concentrated effect, and his mind revolts at the notion. He has very little doubt that it would send him quite mad. 

“R-right. Well. Um. No. I think - this one was about,” he hesitates to look at Helen directly, and forces himself to do so anyway, “you? I think.” Martin turns back to Gerry. “It was about someone on the stair.” Helen coos, and silently claps its terrible hands. 

Gerry’s mouth turns down. “But nothing about any rituals?”

Martin shakes his head before he’s consciously thought about it. “No. No, I don’t think so.” 

Gerry huffs, and nods. The fake sunlight falling through the window dapples the light wood floor. “Yeah, me neither. Keep finding a lot of statements about worms, but they’re mostly Jane Prentiss. Which is a dead end.”

Martin feels suddenly very, very cold. He doesn’t think it’s the fog. “What - what makes you say that?”

Gerry frowns at him, the corners of eyes creasing as they narrow. “Well, I mean, she was active three years ago and then she dropped off the face of the earth. Figured Dekker and his lot had put an end to her.”

“Dekker?” Martin hears himself speaking as if from terribly far away. Gerry nods, already reaching for the next statement. 

“Yeah, you know. The monster hunter?”

Gerry hands Martin a statement, and Martin takes it numbly. The paper crumples a little between his fingers. Gerry’s brow pulls up, and he runs his eyes up and down Martin’s body. Martin shifts, self consciously, half worried that his collar’s pulled down again. “Are you alright Martin? You don’t have to read another, if you don’t want to. These things... They really take it out of you.” Gerry huffs a mirthless laugh. “Worst high I’ve ever had, I’ll tell you that.”

Martin shakes his head. His mind is full of worms, white with black heads, writhing through the hole in his door and in his walls until he’d stuffed them full of whatever junk he could find that would fit. “She’s dead, then?”

Gerry blinks, already running his eyes quickly over the statement in his lap. His thumb absently runs over the back of Martin’s hand, and Martin shivers. “Who?”

Martin isn’t sure he can say it. He feels like the name itself is corruptive: as if speaking it aloud will bring some terrible thing crawling up his gullet and slithering from his lips. He breathes, once, and opens his mouth. The name catches in his throat. He tries again. Gerry is reading in earnest now, and this time Martin notices the change in pressure: the way that Helen stiffens over its chess board (though what rules it’s playing by, Martin has no idea, as the only pieces that it’s using are pawns). Martin tries to speak a third time, and this time he manages, hoarse and quiet, “Jane Prentiss.”

Gerry doesn’t hear him. Martin wets his lips, and finds himself disgusted by the texture of his own tongue. He wipes at his mouth with his sleeve, and the linen of his shirt leaves it tingling. Martin shifts in his seat. The chair is too soft. He feels like he’s sinking into it: as if the cushion is quicksand and it’s trying to suffocate him. Martin says, a little more loudly than before, “Gerry?”

He’s painfully aware of Helen, now, watching him. Its shoulders are raised: not in fear, but preparation for movement, the way a cat lifts its haunches before it pounces. Helen’s fingers trail on the hardwood floor. Martin can feel the thing sucking at the madness threatening to swarm his mind. He doesn’t shut his eyes: he knows what horrors await him there. Instead, he stares at the tall window and the fake field it presents, at the fake blue sky and the sun that hasn’t quite made it into the frame of the window itself, no matter which way he looks. He focuses on the faint smell of vanilla, and body odour. His free hand moves to the weight of the wooden pipe in his pocket. 

Gerry keeps reading the statement in his hand. Martin decides to let it go, and moves to read the one that Gerry had given him. The writing in this one is tall and slanted, given a grace in its looping curlicues that the other had lacked in its madness: “_Last year I moved to the small town of Bucoda, about 15 miles outside of Olympia in the State of Washington. _”

Martin lets Helen’s stage set parody of a world fade away, and loses himself to the fears of someone else. It nearly erases the nagging sensation in the corner of his mind that there’s a worm in the room: white, with a black head, wriggling just outside of his periphery. Coming closer.

* * *

Martin isn’t sure how long they spend in that place. The light of the fake day never changes, and neither he nor Gerry nor, he suspects, Helen, tire in the way that normal people do. Martin supposes they aren’t people any more. As it is, they make it to the bottom of the pile of statements. Gerry takes about three quarters of them, and even with the quarter that Martin handles, the things’ supernatural effects nearly wear him thin enough to tear. He can feel his brain swimming by the end of it, and he’s not sure exactly where his own fear begins and where that of these poor people ends. Gerry assures him that it will settle, in time. Martin feels the grief of a mother who saw her son swallowed by the sky and prays to a god he stopped believing in three years ago that he’s right. 

Even Gerry looks tired, eventually. It’s a slow war of attrition: his hair becomes tangled and wavy in clumps where he runs his free hand through it. He and Martin take it in turns to flex their fingers, trying to ease the cramp in their long since numbed hands. The shadows under Gerry’s eyes seem to deepen, darkening to a blue so rich it’s almost purple. 

Gerry’s on the last one, and Martin has half a mind to rip him out of whatever reverie he’s lost in and tell him to rest. His body is shaking, a little, and his hand is cold and sweating. Across from them, Helen is humming to itself, absently, a faint war tune that Martin half thinks he recognises. But then Gerry turns the page, and there’s nothing to follow, and Martin feels the snap of the Eye’s gaze lifting away from them like a bandage ripped from a wound, so violent and sudden that he can almost imagine the sting of it. 

Gerry blinks, and sways forward in his chair, and Martin leans forward unnecessarily to catch him. Gerry frowns at the table beside him, now empty of any paper at all. Martin swallows, and wishes they had any water, and would not trust whatever Helen might offer them for even a moment. “Gerry? Are you - alright?”

Gerry shakes his head, and his fingers tighten around the paper in his hand, crumpling it. The lettering on it is narrow and cramped, square and precise, written by someone with purpose. Martin catches a glimpse of the sentence on the first page. “_This is the statement of Gertrude Robinson, written by herself on March 15th -” _Martin stares. Gerry is nearly doubled over his own lap, and the hand that’s holding the paper is shaking. Helen sits up a little straighter, and the expression on its face is neither hungry nor mischievous. Instead, its red brows have pulled up into something that’s a convincing approximation of real concern.

“Gerry?” Martin’s not sure whether he’s imagining it, but Helen’s voice sounds suddenly deeper, and softened by some accent he doesn’t recognise. The stiffness of Gerry’s shoulders eases, and he presses his forehead to his knees before he sits up, pale cheeks pink with some foreign fever. 

“We’re missing the last page. I didn’t miss it. I know I didn’t.” Gerry gestures with the paper still clutched tightly in his hand at his own dark eyes. It wafts a wave of cool air across Martin’s face. “I wouldn’t have. Gertrude found out what the Watcher’s Crown was, what Elias was planning.” Gerry gives Martin a crooked smile, and Martin gets the distinct impression that it isn’t meant for him. “Clever old bird.” Gerry stuffs the piece of paper into his pocket, and flexes his fingers around Martin’s. “We need to go. That last page has what we need to stop Elias, and if he knew to hide it then he probably knows we’re here.”

“What?” Martin knows he doesn’t succeed in hiding the fear in his voice, because both Gerry and Helen glance at him with looks of sympathy so similar that Martin wonders whether Helen’s is just an imitation. 

“Yeah. Hopefully we’ve got a few hours but...It could be that we step out of here into a battlefield. You, ah. Best brace yourself for that.” Gerry gives Martin an apologetic look, and gets to his feet. His chair creaks and sighs as he does so, and Gerry pulls Martin’s hand into the air through their interlinked fingers. Martin forces himself to stand as well, ignoring the tingling numbness in his thighs and the creak of his knees.

“Would you like me to take you somewhere else? You don’t have to go back to the Eye, you know.” Helen’s voice is amiable and very nearly human as it sways closer to them like a drunken ballerina. Gerry smiles at it, and his smile is almost fond. 

“You know the rules, _ Es Mentiras _. We leave the way we came. I’d prefer not to be the victim of one of your little jokes.” 

Helen rolls its strange eyes and turns, letting its fingers run over the furniture like loose wire, cutting scars into the coverings. “I don’t like it when you call me that, Gerard. It’s rude. Besides, it’s not like I could kill you.” The door of the room swings open onto a hot pink corridor that had certainly not been there before. Martin swallows the ghost of nausea, and follows Gerry as he leads them out of the room - though he pauses in the doorway, looking back at the small heap of statements on the floor. 

“Should we,” Martin tries to whisper, but Helen has already stopped, and Martin gets the distinct impression that it can hear anything said inside these halls. He gives up on the whisper. “Shouldn’t we take them with us?”

Gerry follows his gaze. The fake sunlight isn’t kind to the faint rashes of pimples around the edges of his scalp and brushed over his nose, though he’s still handsome, framed by waves of black hair that tumble over his shoulders. He shrugs. “They’re only powerful in the hands of the Beholding, or Beholding-touched. And I kept aside anything that would be useful beyond that. Besides, Helen likes the stories. And it irritates Elias.” Gerry grins, and he looks like a schoolboy. Martin finds himself smiling back without thinking. 

Gerry squeezes his hand, and pulls him away from the blue room. “Come on. I don’t know how much time we have.” 

Further down the corridor, Helen laughs, and its laugh tumbles in loops over the walls and ceiling and floor. “Time doesn’t work the way you think it does, Gerry.” 

Gerry rolls his eyes, and Martin tries hard not to let the implications of that statement scare him: tries not to think of leaving these corridors half a century later, into a world where Jon was dead or gone. Helen walks, long legs eating up the hardwood floor. Gerry follows it, and Martin lets himself be pulled along. 

* * *

It doesn’t take long to reach the door. It takes hours. Whenever Martin tries to think about it, the memory eludes him: stretching and blurring the recent past into a mess of pastel paint and erratic reflections on polished wood floors. The sound of footsteps continues to echo strangely long after the three of them come to a stop in front of the faded yellow door they’d stepped through in the night. Helen does not move to the door, and neither does Gerry. Instead, Helen looks at him, and tilts its head sixty degrees to the left. 

“He’s not in love with the person that I was, any more.” Helen is looking at Gerry, so it takes Martin a moment to realise that the monster is directing its sentence at him. Gerry’s hand is slack and cool in Martin’s. He shuts his eyes, and Martin steps closer, concern bubbling up inside him. 

“Are you alright?” He’s standing so close that there’s barely an inch between them, but that hardly feels indecorous in the whirligig world of Helen’s corridors. Martin is standing close enough to see the way Gerry’s eyelids flutter, and feel his soft exhale. His lips part, and he opens his eyes, and they’re dark and deep and unyielding. Martin barely notices the graze of pink across his cheekbones. For a long, long moment, Gerry looks at him. Martin feels something change: some shift in the air, some thought at the back of his mind that has not yet made its way into his conscious brain, some realisation or understanding that he had not known before. He feels himself tilting a little closer, and he feels Gerry do the same. A lock of Gerry’s long, dark hair slips over the crumpled shoulder of his shirt. Martin can’t count how many times he’d chastised Gerry for his presentation, or how many times Gerry had blushed about it. He considers commenting on it now: it would, at least, be a moment of normalcy amidst the monsters and the madness. They’d always been that, for each other, hadn’t they?

But then Gerry heaves a quick, sharp sigh and steps back, squeezing Martin’s hand once, fiercely as he does so and shaking his head. He gives Martin a small, tight smile. “I’m fine, Martin. Thank you.” He looks past Martin, at Helen, which is pouting now, its arms folded again. “He’s dead. That’s all she means.”

Helen tilts forward, and is abruptly twelve feet tall and curling over them like a willow tree, fingers trailing on the floor like leafless branches. Its face presses close to Gerry’s, spiralling eyes twisting almost imperceptibly in the half light of its corridor. “There is a piece of me that would like it if you were happy.”

Gerry sighs again and ducks under Helen’s curving torso, putting his hand on the brass handle of the door. The yellow metal reflects the corridor behind them strangely: showing a wide, steep cavern of a hall steeped in red velvet. “Well, you can’t always get what you want.” Gerry opens the door, and the sharp edges of reality are blunt as a brick wall. Martin’s hyper focused sight, still keen with Gerry’s aid, drinks in every detail of the office in grey light as morning approaches: cataloguing and understanding and remembering and questioning in a way that it hadn’t in Helen’s corridors. Martin wonders if this is how Gerry’s brain works all the time. It’s exhausting. 

Helen flinches back from the doorway, and Martin doesn’t blame it as it shrinks back to the same approximation of a human woman that it had worn before. Gerry steps down from the threshold: there’s about a foot between the door and the floor of the office. He turns back, and Martin feels like some gentlewoman being helped down from her carriage, with Gerry’s hand crooked up in the air between them, waiting to help him down. 

Helen leans forward, close enough that its hair tickles Martin’s face, and it looks dry as flame and sticks like wet seaweed. It breathes over his cheeks, and its breath is hot and smells of liquorice. It opens its mouth, and Martin has no idea what it’s going to say. But then there’s another voice, distant and warm and laughing. 

“Hel? Are we playing another game? Should I come find you?” It takes Martin a moment - the voice is feminine and distant and twisting in echoes around the walls the way that sound tends to do inside these corridors. By the time he’s recognised it, Helen has pulled back, head snapping in the direction of the voice like a hound scenting blood. But the smile it wears on its face is terribly, convincingly human, and Martin thinks it’s far more frightening than the wide gash of a thing it had worn before. Because he believes this one. 

Gerry pulls on Martin’s hand, and Martin steps down and out of the corridors before he can think better of it. He’s not sure if he imagines the spindly graze of long, long fingers on his back. But then Helen says, “I’m coming, darling,” and its voice sounds warm and low and human. The door swings shut, and with a twist in reality wrings itself from existence. Martin blinks, the afterimage of the thing clinging to the back of his eyelids. The other voice is stuck in his head.

He could have sworn that was Melanie. 

Then Gerry’s hand is coming up to squeeze his shoulder, and Martin blinks and focuses on him instead. “You still with me?”

Martin blinks, and tries to ignore the growing headache ringing his temples like some cursed crown. He nods, and isn’t sure how he’ll fare if he tries to speak. Gerry smiles at him, and rubs his thumb over Martin’s shoulder through the cotton of his shirt. They’re still holding hands, and Martin realises that the office around him is still executed in far greater detail than he could have managed with his own eyes. He wonders if this is what lets hawks spot their prey from the air. Gerry steps closer, and he smells of sweat and ink and tobacco. 

“You’re probably going to want to sit down for this.” He gently crowds Martin into a nearby chair, and Martin lets himself be herded. The chair hits the back of his knees, and he folds, sitting on the hammered leather and feeling his bones creak as he does so. His head is swimming: overloaded by detail and sick with the memory of Helen’s corridors, smeared yellow over his thoughts like nausea. Gerry reaches up to gently tap Martin’s cheek, and Martin realises that he’d been speaking. Hearing comes back to him like sound through water, and then he surfaces, and it clarifies.

“-you with me?” Martin nods. He can almost feel the pallor of his own skin: can certainly feel the cold shiver of nausea like a fever in his stomach, and the way that sweat is clinging to his back. He supposes transferring his mind and body between three gods in almost as many hours would take a toll, and stepping into the domain of a fourth might be too much even for the shell that Peter had made of him. 

There’s a brief, confusing moment, when Gerry squeezes his cheek - reassuring and almost romantic in its intimacy. But then he lets go, flexing his fingers, and holds up their interlinked hands between them. Gerry’s fingers are long and hard and pale, Martin’s are a little warmer, softer, giving against the hard bones of Gerry’s knuckles, grazed with freckles that with his new eyes Martin thinks he could count if he tried. “I’m going to let go. It’s. Going to hurt like hell, honestly, so after that I’m going to get some morphine from the drawer and you’re going to chase it and hopefully that’ll help.”

Martin wets his lips, and imagines he can taste vanilla and liquorice and yellow paint. “Hopefully?”

Gerry’s mouth moves in an apologetic shrug, and he nods. “I’ve never pulled someone through this many powers before. I’m guessing the Mother might do what she can to help. Word has it she dotes on her puppeteers. But I wouldn’t count on it.” 

Martin thinks of the light weight of the wooden pipe in his pocket. He blinks, and he can see the threads: glittering translucent as fishing wire in the twilight of the office, wrapped around and around his fingers. There are dozens of them, more, strands and strands stretching from his fingertips out in every direction, to the walls and through them, out of the door, through the window, out into London and, he thinks, beyond it. In one breathless moment Martin sees himself and Gerry as they are, caught suspended in the heart of a glittering cat’s cradle that reaches racing around the world. He breathes, and the threads shiver, and the one between himself and Gerry is wrapped in a tangle of starlight thread around their locked fingers. Then Martin blinks again, and the threads are gone. 

He nods. “Do it.”

Gerry clenches his jaw, and slowly uncurls his fingers. Just before he pulls back, Martin shuts his eyes. Its strange, because even so he feels the world shift and soften and blur. The sharp icy clarity of connection between himself and every detail of the space around him: every chip and crack and letter and mote of dust, grows wide once more. Martin’s stomach turns, as if he’s just tilted over an abyss. He feels pain and nausea rising in the back of his head like a wave, ready to wash over him. Martin squeezes his eyes shut, and he finds the threads, and he lets them catch him. He opens his eyes. Gerry is watching him, and there’s a subtle curve in his nose from where it had once been broken. Martin can remember the knowledge, coming to him so easily he barely registered its arrival. But that memory is flawed now, and blurred, and the office behind Gerry’s shoulders is crowded and slightly out of focus. Martin swallows, and Gerry raises his eyebrows. 

“I’m impressed.”

Martin shakes his head, and slips his hand into his pocket, rubbing his thumb over the soft wood of the pipe, feeling the ridges of its engraving. “You shouldn’t be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I’m not sure that I believed I had lost my power over Forsaken, or that the Mother had replaced it, until I stepped into those corridors. The twisting deceit is agony for the Web, and my mind was laced with it, now. It was Gerry, of course, and more strangely the Ceaseless Watcher that saved me. Do you think that it works like disease? Do we carry hints of each the longer that we spend with them? Do they each wait for the right conditions in which to incubate, and grow, and consume us?_


	22. Two Eyes

Once he’s satisfied that Martin really is alright, Gerry grabs his coat from the coat stand in the corner of the room and pulls it over his shoulders. It’s a great workman’s duster of a thing, though now that Martin’s glimpsed a few of the objects Gerry carries with him, he imagines Gerry has chosen it for the pockets as much as for its aesthetic appeal. Martin stands, and ignores the way the world tilts, falling into the way it adjusts itself and trusting the threads to catch him. He tries not to think about the roiling icy bite of fog at the edges of his thoughts. 

“Are we going out?” Martin reaches for his own coat, long since discarded onto another chair nearby. The material is thick and heavy but soft with closely woven wool. Gerry shakes his head, gathering his hair up between his hands and tying it back with a dark green ribbon. 

“Just to Elias’ office, but I like to be prepared.”

Martin thinks about leaving at a sprint and bursting into a busy London street in his shirtsleeves. “That’s fair.” He pauses, realising that he has absolutely no idea what to expect from Elias: whether he’ll be as human as Peter Lukas or as monstrous as Helen and Jared Hopworth. “What’s...What’s he like?”

Gerry stops halfway to the door, hands under the collar of his coat, halfway to lifting the stiff material around his neck. “Who, Elias?”

Martin nods. Gerry pauses, hands slowing as they press his collar up. The office stretches between them, crowded with cluttered empty desks like an untidy classroom. “Convincingly human. Short.” Martin snorts, and Gerry grins. He gets to the door, and Martin moves to follow him. 

But then Gerry stops and dances back inside, swearing. The sound of footsteps echoes down the marble floor of the hall outside their office. Martin feels ice shoot down his spine and he stiffens, half-consciously reaching for the strings around his fingers. “What is it?” He whispers, and the quiet of the office lifts the sound across the room. 

Gerry turns back to him, and his hair is a whip of inky black as he does. “Jon. Hide!”

Martin has a moment to think that if Elias has let them into Helen’s corridors, and seen him take the Web’s pipe, then it’s probably too late to follow any of Peter’s other dictats. But then he thinks about what would happen if he were wrong: if all else were forgivable but this, and the punishment fell on Jon’s head. 

He scrambles under the nearest desk.

Martin is not a small man: his torso barely fits in the space between the desk and the cool floor, and he has to roughly pull his legs together to crush himself into the wooden box of the thing, bending forward so that his head is pressed up against the wood in front of his shoulders. It’s hardly comfortable, and his back is aching already, but then the footsteps get closer and stop and for the first time in over three months, Martin hears Jonathan Sims’ voice.

“_Where is Martin Blackwood _?”

Martin stops breathing. He can feel the shiver of tension in the air: the weight of Jon’s god pressing down on the three of them. He didn’t think he’d miss the looping echoes of Helen’s corridors, but he finds himself wanting them now, as the rich deep warmth of Jon’s voice disappears from the air between them. He shuts his eyes and imagines Jon’s face: imagines his dark brow rumpled with frustration and concern, imagines the mess of his black and silver hair, and the hunch of his narrow shoulders. His chest aches. 

Gerry says, “In London.” The words come out stiff and forced, and Martin can almost imagine the way he’s pursing his lips, resisting the urge to let any further words past the dam of his mouth, even as his god pulls at him to submit. 

Jon breathes, and it's sudden and shaken. Martin can feel butterflies pressing against his ribcage. “What?” There’s no magic in this, and Jon’s voice is high and weak with his surprise. Martin wants more desperately than he’s ever wanted anything to step out, and hold him, and promise he’ll never leave again. Instead he focuses on the groaning protest of his muscles and the hard frame of the wood over his back. The office is quiet and still, and Martin gets the irrational sense that it’s waiting. Jon speaks again, more firmly this time: “_Is he safe? _”

“Not really.” This time Gerry speaks too quickly, light and honest, and follows it quickly with a more fervent, “Damn it Jon, stop that.”

“What do you mean he isn’t safe? Where is he? When did you see him? Where is he now?” The questions roll one after the other like a river down a hill, stumbling over themselves, and Martin can hear the panic in Jon’s voice. He can feel himself leaning forwards, getting ready to move and show himself and tell him everything.

There’s a rustle of fabric as one of the men moves. Gerry speaks. “Jon, calm down and listen to me. Martin is alive. I know where he is. But!” Martin can imagine Jon, mouth open, glaring as Gerry continues, “I can’t tell you where he is. It would put both of your lives in danger, and despite your insistence on driving me to distraction, I don’t actually want you to die. So I need you to trust me, alright? I’m pretty sure there’s nothing that he wants more than to see you right now.” Martin wonders whether that’s just the intuition of two years of friendship, or the strange focus to his vision that Gerry had lent him. “But he can’t. We have certain tasks to complete first. I promise, as soon as I can, I’ll tell you where he is. I swear it.”

There’s a long, long pause. Martin can’t help but feel that his breathing is terribly loud in the quiet space. He can feel the strings wrapped around his fingers: can feel a handful pulling him back towards the doorway and Jon. He knows, somehow, that if he tugged on them he could bring him closer, or send him away, or ask for whatever he wanted. The thought triggers an unease so violent it nearly distracts him from Jon’s reply.

“Very well.” The words are heavy with exhaustion, and Martin feels his gut wrench. More immediately, he hears Gerry sigh, and a rustle of fabric. Martin imagines Gerry clasping Jon’s arm, or his shoulder. His fingers tingle, and the threads around them shiver. As carefully as he can, Martin tucks his hand under his armpit, half thinking it’ll somehow muffle the effect. 

“I’m sorry, Jon.”

Jon sighs again, and there’s the soft sound of rubber on stone as he shifts his weight. Martin’s feet are going numb, pulled tight against his body. He ignores it, every part of him focused on his ears as he strains to hear each word and sound, collecting scraps like a dog that has spent too long on the street with nothing better. “No, it’s…” Jon exhales. He sounds so tired. “Is he alright?” Jon’s voice is tentative, and Martin barely notices the compulsion until Gerry is answering. 

“Peter did a number on him, but, yeah. Mostly.” Gerry clicks his tongue. “I would’ve told you that anyway, Jon.”

“What did Peter do to him?” There’s a low, quiet anger in Jon’s voice as he asks the question, and Martin can imagine the heat in the rich brown of his eyes, and the stubborn line of his sharp jaw as it clenches. He feels the pull of the scars on his back, stretching over his shoulders and down along his spine. He flushes. 

Gerry hesitates. “I think… It’s not mine to say. Listen, Jon, I really need to go. I’m. Sort of working on my own project. I don’t want to be callous, but if that’s all?” Gerry leaves the question in the air, and Martin can hear his discomfort, though he’s not sure if Jon would. 

Jon clears his throat. “Right, of course. You will - you _will_ tell me, where Martin is. When you can?”

Gerry’s voice is warm when he replies. “Of course, Jon.” Martin’s calves are prickling with cramp. There’s a rustle of fabric, though Martin isn’t sure which of them it is. In front of him he can see a set of drawers at an adjacent desk, and the black rubber residue of someone’s footprint on the stone floor of the office. Beyond it, the green walls are getting lighter with the coming day.

“Could you, uh, if it’s not too much - could you give him a message for me?” There’s more rustling of fabric. Martin’s face feels hot, and he’s not sure if it’s the way he’s squeezed into the tiny dark space of the desk or something else entirely. His chin nearly grazes his knees. 

“What is it?” Gerry sounds wary, and Martin supposes he would be. He doesn’t have much control over whether or not he tells him, and there’s any number of things that Jon could say which would make him throw all else to the wind, Elias and Peter and the fate of the world be damned. 

Jon’s voice is curt and business like when he continues, and Martin thinks he knows him well enough by now to hear the faint embarrassment (and under that and fainter still, a shy kind of hope). “We’re investigating the worm woman, Jane Prentiss. She was active in the city three years ago. I think I have a lead on what happened to her. If - if he wants or is able to join us then. As always his assistance is greatly appreciated.”

Gerry snorts and mutters under his breath, “How romantic.” Martin’s not sure if he’d have heard it if the hour weren’t so early and there wasn’t so little traffic on the street outside. As it is, his face burns for an entirely ordinary reason that has nothing to do with the way he’s hiding under a desk like a child. 

“I beg your pardon?” Jon’s voice is sharp and aggressive - with his own embarrassment, Martin thinks - or perhaps insult. Martin doesn’t blame him. Jon was a man of station, a man of wealth. Martin had seen the quality of the clothes he wore and the comfort of his lodgings. The company he kept was unusual, but neither Georgie nor even Melanie were of a low class. Martin suspected he was the poorest man Jon knew, or at least the poorest of his friends. Nurturing any kind of romantic feelings for someone of Martin’s station is beneath Jon, let alone such inclinations for a failed patchwork monster. It would be unthinkable. 

Martin feels the cold coil of fog curling up inside his chest, tempting him to reach for it and pull it closer like a bandage or a salve. He purses his lips and ignores it, letting the ordinary ache of rejection hurt him anyway, and finding reassurance in the humanity of it. 

“Nothing.” Gerry’s voice is light with humour, and he doesn’t make much effort to hide his amusement. “Yes, I’ll tell him. Be careful, won’t you? Filth is nasty business, and it doesn’t work like ordinary disease. Or worms, I guess, if you’re going after whatever’s left of Prentiss.”

“Yes, thank you, Gerry, I’ve read the statements.” Jon’s voice is stiff and formal again, though Martin feels an irrational kind of warmth to hear him use Gerry’s name. There’s another pause, and out on the street Martin can hear the first carriages of the morning begin to rattle their way down the cobbled bones of London. 

“You know - they’re not. They’re not always reliable sources. Just. Tread carefully?” Martin thinks about the pile of statements in Gerry’s desk. He thinks about the fact that Gerry has been delivering them, like doses of poison, slowly transmuting Jon into the monster he’s becoming. He thinks he can hear the guilt of that, now, in Gerry’s stumbling warning. He’s not sure he can forgive it, exactly. But he understands. 

Martin thinks about a world where they all got to be human, and simple, and act only as themselves. It seems impossible, now. 

“I will. Good luck with your own projects. Don’t die.” Martin can hear the faint hint of a smile in Jon’s voice now, and a larger one in Gerry’s reply.

  
“I’ll do my best.”

* * *

Jon leaves, and Martin waits until Gerry comes to the desk under which he’s hiding before he slowly, stiffly uncurls, feeling the rush of blood back into his prickling limbs. Gerry offers him a hand and Martin takes it, though his vision doesn’t sharpen this time. Instead, Gerry pulls him to his feet in one easy heave, and waits while Martin shakes out his arms and legs briskly for a second before handing him his coat.

“Shall we?”

Martin hesitates. He’s thinking about white worms with black heads, and a woman with holes in her face. “I’m. Jon said - about,” He just can’t say the name. He brushes his arms, briskly, as if to dust them clean. Gerry cocks his head, and Martin swallows down the sense of crawling slime in his throat. “He needs me.” Martin flushes, embarrassed by the thin demand of his own voice. Gerry steps closer, and puts his hands on Martin’s shoulders. 

“He’s survived three months without you, Martin. And if Elias succeeds, there won’t be anything of him left to need you.” Martin tries to focus on the firm, solid feeling of Gerry’s hands on his shoulders, and not to think about them crumbling into a soft heap of decay and crawling things. “Elias first. Then Jon.” Gerry squeezes Martin’s shoulders, and smiles. “Jane Prentiss disappeared three years ago. It’ll be fine.”

Martin imagines the threads around them, and wonders whether he could use one to make Jon go home and stay there, safe and warm and protected until he could reach him. The same kick of unease from before hits him again. He knows, somewhere, that stealing Jon’s will from him is a violation for which he could not forgive himself. But worse than that is the temptation whispering at the back of his mind that says it doesn’t matter as long as Jon is alive. 

Martin takes his hand out of his pocket, and lifts it instead to hold Gerry’s arm, chasing the memory of focus and clarity that the Eye had given him. He half imagines it opening above their heads, wide and hungry as some great toothy maw. He feels the threads shiver, offended by the sight as it chases away the safe comfort of their shadows. Martin clenches his teeth, and ignores his own discomfort: the way he wants to shrink and hide and weave a world that works the way he needs it to. 

“Alright. Elias first.”

Gerry claps his shoulders and lets him go, turning and walking out of the office. Martin follows him, but he hesitates when he gets to the doorframe, turning back to look at the wide cavern of the space, spotlit by the early grey light of a drizzly London morning. The desks sit cluttered and disorganised, empty as a stage set. Light flickers like water over the varnished wood and stone floor. There’s a sense in his gut, deep and primal, that he will not return here. Martin doesn’t know if it’s the Eye, or more ordinary foreboding. But he takes a moment anyway, to think of the two years he’s spent in this place, hunched over his desk and chasing the dream of an ordinary life. 

Then he turns, and follows Gerry down the hall. 

The building is cool and quiet, but not silent any more: Martin can hear people starting to come into The Observer’s offices. Secretaries and cleaners and cooks and waiting staff, journalists and guests and interviewees. Occasionally, far off, the heavy wooden doors at the front of the building swing open and let in the fresh air and noise of an increasingly bustling street. There’s a dog barking, and people talking, and the clip of horse’s hoofs down the road, tugging carts and carriages. Pigeons coo and flap outside the windows, and daylight spills into the tall, cold halls down which Martin and Gerry walk, weak grey bouncing off bright white stone. 

It doesn’t take Martin as long as he’d expected for them to reach Elias’ office, and part of him feels like an utter idiot for not wandering here sooner. Another part of him thinks that perhaps it was not only his own ignorance that had kept him from taking the series of right angle turns down which Gerry leads them like Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth. Eventually, they reach an unassuming dark wood door with a brass plaque which simply reads, “_The Editor _”. The letters have been rubbed black, and sit neat and stark against the reflective metal. Martin can see himself and Gerry mirrored in it, warped by perspective. He curls his fingers, more for the reassurance of a fist than for any potential violence to be done with it. 

Gerry hesitates for half a heartbeat, and then he steps forward, lifts his hand, and knocks. 

A rich, deep voice rings out, half muffled by the wood. Martin thinks that he can hear the smile in it. “Come in.”

Gerry looks back at Martin, and Martin nods. There is no part of him that feels remotely prepared for what is about to happen. But he is somehow convinced that it needs to happen anyway. Martin thinks about the threads on his fingers, and wonders how many are wrapped by others around him. 

Gerry, meanwhile, grasps the door handle and pushes it open, revealing a fairly small, square office. A beautiful dark wood desk sits at the centre of it, pushed close to the wall, and either side of the room is crowded by bookshelves and cabinets, bursting with tomes and papers, like a forest allowed to grow wild and untamed. A window sits high in the wall, latticed by iron chequers, and it creates a patchwork grey and black halo behind the head of the man standing in front of it. 

He’s shorter than Gerry and Martin, though Martin thinks that he might be taller than Jon. He has sandy blonde hair and limpid grey eyes. His skin is weathered and clear, and Martin cannot tell whether he is in his twenties or his fifties. He wears a neat, beautifully fitted grey suit, and on one of his hands is a simple gold wedding ring. He takes a silver watch out of his waistcoat pocket, and the click of the metal opening is as sharp as the hammer of a gun. “You’re late.” Elias Bouchard sounds amused, like an indulgent schoolteacher humouring some insolent child. Gerry has stepped into his office, but Martin stands just behind him, still frozen in the corridor. Elias continues: “Were you distracted by Jon, again?”

There’s something about the way Elias says Jon, the way other people say God and Christ and Mary, something reverent and worshipful and lingering. Martin swallows, and a flash of anger races up the back of his neck like a rash. He steps forward, following Gerry into the office, and closes the door behind them. Elias tilts his head, like a bird. 

“Martin. So good to see you again. I trust you enjoyed your little holiday with Peter?” Elias’ lips curl, and he runs his eyes slowly, deliberately, up and down Martin’s body. “It certainly looked like you did.”

Martin feels a terrible, prickling flush roll down his neck and chest. He has the sudden urge to pull on his coat and wrap it around him and try to somehow hide from the prying creep of Elias’ gaze on his naked skin. For the first time, Elias’ smile bares his teeth. 

Gerry steps in front of Martin, blocking him from view. “Enough of that, Elias. Give us the statement.” 

Elias chuckles. “Or what, Gerard? You’ll kill me? I hardly think you’re capable of that.” Martin feels Gerry bristle in front of him. Far off, in other corridors, there’s the soft sound of voices as the newspaper begins its day in earnest. Martin feels as if they might as well be on the moon, for all the comfort it gives him. There’s no doubt in his mind that no one is coming to help them, and it’s not the cold bite of the Lonely that makes him believe it: just too long spent dancing with monsters and the fools that serve them. 

“I’d tell you not to underestimate me, Elias, but that’s kind of your thing, isn’t it?” Gerry grins, and it’s mostly just exposing his teeth. Elias sighs, a careful, manicured, performative kind of thing, and lifts the weak curve of his chin. 

“Would you like to know how she died, Gerard?” He doesn’t wait for an answer - or at least Martin doesn’t think he does. Gerry chokes and jerks, suddenly, chest moving as if he’d been punched or shot. He takes a step back, and his knees start to buckle, and Martin barely has the wits to catch him whilst he searches for whatever invisible assailant has been set upon them. In his arms Gerry spasms again, jerking around his shoulder, and ribs, and throat, making short cut off sounds of pain. 

“What - Gerry!” Martin thinks his voice is too loud and too high in the quiet, but he doesn’t know what to do. There’s a heavy metal scraping sound and Elias is stalking around his desk like a big cat and the space is suddenly terribly small. Martin glances up at him, distracted from Gerry’s dark unseeing eyes, and sees the heavy length of iron pipe in Elias’ elegant hand. It’s utterly incongruous against the neat press of his suit trousers and the tidy, overcrowded surroundings of his office. Martin backs up, heaving Gerry with him as he shudders. He glances down, and sees that Gerry’s cheeks are wet, and has no idea when he started crying or what it means. The door handle presses into Martin’s back, and Elias hefts the pipe. 

“I’d say I’m sorry about this, Martin.” He grasps the pipe with both hands like a cricket bat. Martin shrinks back against the door, arms full of Gerry’s shaking body, unable to call on the fog and unsure of what the threads would do if he pulled them. Elias grins. “But I’m really not.”

Elias swings, and Martin shrinks back, and then suddenly Gerry isn’t in his arms. Instead he leaps up, viper fast, and catches the bar in his hand, and the force rings down his arm so fiercely Martin thinks he can feel the shiver of it. Gerry grunts, and wrenches, and twists the pipe out of Elias’ grip. The movement shakes the silver necklace he’d been wearing out of his shirt, and Elias’ eyes catch on the glitter of it.

He snarls, all pretence of composure gone, and spits, “The Twisting Deceit.” 

Gerry hefts the pipe in his own hands, raising it high, and swings. Elias dances out of the way, barely, and Gerry swings again. “I told you, Elias: you underestimated me.”

Martin stands frozen, legs stiff, unsure of what he can possibly do beyond ordinary violence and certain that that will do very little to help. His gaze falls to the desk, where a single white piece of paper covered in neat black square handwriting is lying like a fallen feather. He straightens a little. Elias has picked up a letter opener, and is stabbing with it now like a pickpocket, dancing in and out of Gerry’s blows almost too fast to follow. The silver thing glitters like a dagger, and when he sinks it into Gerry’s arm, Gerry bleeds red and fast, grunting. But he pulls back, and swings the pipe at Elias’ legs, and this time Elias topples against the bookshelf with a shout. 

Martin starts to creep across the office, reaching for the desk, half hoping that somehow Elias won’t have noticed, distracted by the violence at hand. The office was cold but it’s hot now, loud with the bursts of air and sound Elias and Gerry elicit from each other as they scuffle. Martin gets to Elias’ desk. He hadn’t seen it before, but there’s a portrait of Jon here: a watercolour executed in miniature. Jon is hunched over his desk, a piece of paper in his hands, not wearing his jacket. His waistcoat hangs open, and his hair is ruffled. There’s no sign he’s aware of the painter. Martin feels his mouth twist, and resists the urge to take it. 

It’s at this moment that Elias dances up and under Gerry’s arm, grabbing his hair and using it to swing his head with brutal force into a nearby cabinet. Gerry chokes, and the pipe falls out of his hand with an explosive clatter onto the floor. There’s blood trickling down the side of the wood, and Martin barely notices the taste of salt and metal in the air, hands shaking as he reads the piece of paper in front of him. The Eye presses down heavy on his head and the back of his neck and Martin can feel it peeling him open, inspecting his tendons and every slimy piece of flesh that makes him who and what he is, crushing him into the ground with the weight of it. 

Elias starts to laugh. 

Gerry gets up with a roar and tackles Elias into the bookshelves, and blood dribbles down Elias’s nose as he does so. But Elias isn’t watching Gerry, he’s watching Martin. Martin looks up, and Elias is smiling at him, and there is nothing noticeably monstrous about it and it is not remotely human. Martin can’t breathe. Gerry throws Elias onto the ground, lifting him up by the collar of his shirt, and Elias keeps laughing, breathless and hysterical and mad. 

Gertrude Robinson’s final statement sits on the page in Martin’s hand, and the letters of it swim in and out of focus as it reverberates around his brain.

“_Insistence that I encounter each avatar - _

_ “The questions were a sign that I was becoming - _

_ “Of the remaining thirteen, I had not yet seen eight, and yet still I - _

_ “That the Watcher’s Crown should be so simple a rite makes - _

_ “An encounter would be enough, with each of the dread powers. The transformation would be devastating, leaving me with no shred of my mind, my self or my humanity. I shudder to think what the Eye and its brethren would do to the world. So I have taken it upon myself to -” _

Finally, finally, Martin manages to speak. “Jon.” The word is hoarse and quiet and by all rights neither Gerry nor Elias should have heard it, but both of them stop. Elias’ face is a bloody crooked mess and Gerry’s arm bleeds sluggishly through his crumpled shirt sleeve. Elias grins, and his teeth are pink. 

“She’ll be with him now. Shame you came here instead, isn’t it?” 

Panic drives into Martin like a knife in the back, and he drops Gertrude’s statement onto Elias’ desk, swaying as his mind fights through the blank scream of his fear. 

“What are you talking about?” Gerry snarls, shaking Elias, hands white with the force of it. Elias spits in his face. 

Martin pushes the desk out of the way, heading for the door, feet moving faster with every step. “The Watcher’s Crown. It’s Jon. An encounter with every power and Jane’s the last. It’s, he’s, I have to go.” Martin gets to the door and grabs it and every action blurs fluidly into the next; all he knows is that he needs to go. His mind is halfway down the corridors and nearly at the street and thinking how best to reach the offices from here: if he should take a carriage or steal a horse or just run as fast as his legs will take him. 

But then Elias twists, and kicks Gerry’s legs out from under him. There’s a flash of silver like a fish in deep water, and then the soft squelch of tearing flesh as Elias sinks his knife between Gerry’s ribs. Gerry coughs, wet and high with pain as he crashes onto the marble floor. Elias tugs out the knife with mercenary efficiency and grabs the back of Martin’s head, pulling his hair hard enough to drive pain through Martin’s skull like a punch. Elias’ arm comes up around Martin’s chest, pulling him back hard, and he presses the letter opener into the soft skin of Martin’s throat. The blunt metal is sticky with Gerry’s blood, and pushes into Martin’s oesophagus like cold fingers. Tears sting at Martin’s eyes from Elias’ grip on his hair, and Elias’ hot breath sets Martin’s skin crawling. 

“That’s quite enough of that.” Elias growls into his ear, and he pushes the letter opener into Martin’s neck with bruising force. Martin’s hands scrabble at Elias’ arms as ineffectually as a child, and then something else starts to push into the back of his head, a tide of memories so vivid they hide the room around him and drown him in his mother’s house, her hand sharp on his face as she slaps him. Distantly, Martin can feel his skin starting to split, and he chokes and tries to speak and his feet slide against the stone. Elias holds him firm and his mind flickers between the office and a cold dirty house where his mother is looming over him with an iron poker and he can’t get away. Blood dribbles hot and fast and bubbling down Martin’s chest, and Elias starts to pull the letter opener, and he can’t move he can’t breathe he doesn’t know where he is. Tears roll hot and fat down his cheeks and Martin’s chest heaves and the blade moves with bruising force and in one brief moment of clarity Martin thinks, helplessly, hopelessly, of Jonathan Sims alone and trapped and needing him. He thinks about the fact that he will never arrive.

Then, suddenly, the connection snaps. The bruising force of his mother’s poker disappears, and so does the illusion of their house, and the knife is wrenched away from his throat and Elias’ arms disappear from Martin’s back and his hand releases Martin’s hair. Martin topples forward, doubling over and coughing, heaving great gasps of air through his ragged throat, somehow not yet torn beneath his skin. Blood spurts and dribbles over his collarbone, and Martin can taste salt and metal and bile in his mouth, but the sweet fresh relief of oxygen washes it away like a spring. His head swims with pain, and he stumbles, and then Gerry shouts behind him.

“Go, Martin! Now!” There’s a dark slick of blood on the floor behind Gerry, and he’s holding Elias’ arms as Elias snarls, suit stained red and torn. Martin hesitates, looking at Gerry’s face: too pale and flecked with blood. Gerry’s hair is wild and tangled around his head, and the pipe lies on the floor, as does the letter opener, crimson with their blood. Elias’ back arches as he struggles, and Martin steps back. Gerry hurls Elias onto the ground and picks up the pipe, pausing to turn back to Martin. “None of this matters if the world ends. Go! Now!” Gerry meets Martin’s eyes. “He needs you.”

Martin’s blind with pain and panic and fear, but all he can think to say is, _you need me too. _

Then Elias grabs the knife, sitting up to stab it hard into Gerry’s thigh. Gerry grunts and Martin doesn’t think. He reaches for the door handle and turns it and swings the door open. The wood cracks against the wall like a thunder clap and Martin doesn’t wait to hear the echo. He runs out into the hall, one hand pressed up against the hot bubbling stream of blood pouring from the gash in his throat. 

He sobs as he runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ I wanted to see you more painfully than I had ever wanted anything, even my freedom. Instead I felt like a child, hiding and listening to you speak about the thing that had - But I believed Gerry. More truly, I believed and knew my own bias. I would put you above everything, including the end of the world. Gerry would not, could not. So at last I met my Editor. And I learned the truth. _


	23. Consumption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depiction of a person being eaten alive. Please read the tags, and proceed with care.

Martin has never seen The Observer’s offices so busy. He has to push through people as he goes, and the blood running hot and thin and sticky over his fingers isn’t helping. People gasp and shout as he goes, and he misses the fog keenly, wishing he could fade into the background and move faster. A man - a reporter Martin thinks he recognises by the name of Thompson - tries to get in his way. But Martin shoves past him and doesn’t have the time or energy to apologise. He bursts out onto the street and into London and it feels like jumping into a river. The cold air hits his face and makes him gasp and his chest heaves and his throat gurgles. Martin stops, panting, looking up and down the street as he thinks wildly about the fastest way to get to Jon. 

A slight blonde woman steps up to him: she has bright green eyes and a kind face. Martin nearly dismisses her, sweat making his shirt cling to his back as he heaves in one painful breath after another. But then he looks at her again. “Sasha?”

A tall, dark man steps out of the crowd, and puts his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. Tim smiles at Martin, but the corners of his eyes are tight. “Martin, you need to go. Jon’s in danger.”

The two of them look almost human, here on the street, camouflaged amidst the crowds. A man walks past Sasha, and Martin can see the movement of his coat through the translucent blue of her skirt. “I-I know.” Martin’s throat is hoarse, but the blood has stopped bubbling now, and he pulls his hand away from his throat, gingerly poking at it. A wad of thick, soft web is plugging the wound. Martin pulls his hand away, and the web sticks a little to his fingertip. Tim and Sasha stare, Tim’s mouth pulling down in disgust.

“What the hell happened to you?” Tim’s disgust doesn’t quite mask his concern. Martin shakes his head, and ignores the bruising ache in his neck as he does so.

“Doesn’t matter, we need to find Jon.”

Sasha flickers, and Martin follows the movement. She reappears with a flutter next to a parked hansom cab on the other side of the street, and calls over the heads of oblivious pedestrians. “This one’s empty! Quick!”

Martin and Tim step into the busy street, dodging shocked stares at Martin’s bloody hand and shirt and neck, and quickly cross the cobbles. Martin barely registers the smell of manure, jumping up onto the pavement and climbing onto the carriage. Tim and Sasha climb up after him, sitting on either side of the straw stuffed cushion. They leave no dip in the fabric. Martin picks up the heavy leather reins, and hesitates. Tim stares at him. “Please tell me you’ve done this before.” 

On the pavement, a cab driver looks up from talking to a flower seller, flask in hand, and starts to shout. Martin grins at Tim, and cracks the reins, and the horse slowly lumbers into a walk, turning onto the street. The cabbie starts to run towards them, swearing, and other people on the street are staring now: women in their hats and men with their canes and children clinging to their parents. Martin cracks the reins again, and the horse moves into a trot as they get into the centre of the crowded road. Cyclists and horses and carriages and pedestrians fill the cobbles like a muddy river, and with one of his hands Martin reaches up for the threads in the air around him. He grabs them and pulls, and the road parts like the red sea. 

“Martin!” Sasha’s voice is high and warning. Martin laughs, hoarse and wet with the blood sticking to the back of his throat. He cracks the reins a third time, and with a great heave the horse begins to canter, sending them rattling madly down the avenue he’s made for them with a roaring thunder of horse hooves and wood on stone.

Tim holds onto the sides of the carriage as if that’ll make any difference, “So I’ll take that as a no, then?” He shouts, and they swerve at a corner, Martin pulling on the threads in the air like a conductor, forcing the crowds to part for them. Martin keeps laughing, past the fear and the panic and the pain, pushing his mind towards the cliff edge of madness. 

“No time like the present!”

* * *

They get to Ghost Hunt UK in 20 minutes, and Martin thinks probably by all rights he should be lying crumpled and broken beneath so much splintered carriage by now. As it is, he jumps down onto the pavement, and ignores his aching bones. The horse’s black coat is slick with sweat, and it pants in its reins. Martin makes a note to bring it something later, if he survives what’s about to happen next. Tim and Sasha drift down to join him, and Tim’s face is tinged faintly green by the journey. 

In front of them are the offices of Ghost Hunt UK. It’s a fairly unassuming building. It’s also, currently, crawling with a carpet of white, gleaming worms with black heads that speckle the facade like mud. Vomit rises in Martin’s throat before he can stop it, and he swallows the sour burn of it and forces himself to take a step forward. His whole body is shaking. He looks at Sasha. “Jon is in there?”

Sasha tears her eyes away from the writhing, glistening building, and nods. “Helen has Melanie and Georgie in her corridors, but Jon’s trapped in the kitchen. They haven’t gotten in yet.”

“They hadn’t.” Tim corrects her, and then he flickers, disappearing from Martin’s side. Both Martin and Sasha watch. The clicking squelch of the worms is the only sound that fills the empty street, and Martin wonders whether it’s Peter’s doing: whether Elias had him set the stage for this last entrapment. He feels a deep, cold anger at the thought of it. Tim returns with another flicker. His face is grim, and his jaw set. “He’s still there. It’s. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

“Is there any way to stop them?” Martin asks. The light ripples off the backs of the worms as if they were a clouded sea, and he finds himself nauseatingly drawn to the glitter of it. The faint smell of rot has reached them now, and it’s thick in the air. 

Sasha and Tim exchange a look. “They hate the cold. But you need something concentrated, and freezing. We thought - maybe, the fog?” Sasha hesitates, looking up at Martin. Martin wants to laugh. He thinks about being in his flat, three years ago, and waiting for the end. He shakes his head.

“That’s not an option.” 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tim snarls, and Martin whirls on him, bloody and sweating and exhausted. 

“It means it’s not an option, Tim, so we have to come up with something else. I don’t have time to argue about this.” He’s loud and shrill and he doesn’t care. Tim hovers backwards, and Martin turns back to the building. “Is there a way in?”

Sasha drifts in front of him. “Yes. The second floor: there’s a back door into the kitchen. It’s locked with a bolt from the inside, so Jon can’t get through it.” She looks over Martin’s shoulder at Tim, and he drifts forward too.

“They haven’t found it yet. I checked.”

Martin nods. “Alright.” He starts walking down the little path towards the writhing swarm of worms. Sasha and Tim both block his way. Martin raises his eyebrows at them. “Well? Are you going to show me or do I need to find it myself?”

Sasha purses her lips and glances up at Tim. The smell of rot here is so thick and sweet Martin wants to choke on it. “Martin, they’ll eat you alive. Literally.”

Martin nods. “I know. I’ve dealt with these things before.” The sound of clicking crawling slime is louder than cicadas on a hot night in a dry country, and Martin’s brain is ringing with it. He pushes down the fear, and gestures impatiently at the undulating building. “Shall we?” Beside his feet, worms have begun to wriggle up out of the grass and stone, leaving little dark holes where they go, crawling cockroach fast towards his shoes. Martin swallows. Tim and Sasha exchange another look, and the weak light of the early day filters through the tops of their heads and leaves them faded as an old daguerreotype. 

Sasha clenches her jaw, and turns with a soundless twirl of her immaterial skirts, walking quickly down the path and the side of the house. Tim hesitates, dark eyes wide and unguarded and bright with concern. “You’re a brave man, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin shakes his head and laughs, following Sasha down the path and picking through the grass, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that he’s avoiding the worms. “You’d be the first to think so.”

* * *

They get around the edge of the house, and Sasha gestures to a window on the second floor. The swarm has not yet reached it, leaving patches of bare brick here like a new hive. The window is shut, and dark within. The sill is nearly fifteen feet above the ground. 

Martin looks around for anything on which to stand, but the side of the building is dark and cool and empty. The wall throws a shadow over the brick, and the ribbon of the sky is grey and overcast and offers nothing. Martin reaches out, tentatively setting his palm on the rough dry stone, half expecting worms to burrow out of it and through his skin, up his arm and into his chest. Nothing happens. Tim and Sasha float down the building on either side of him, looking for something to help him climb.

Martin stands in front of the wall and breathes in shallow breaths and can’t get rid of the thick dry taste of rot on his tongue. He puts his other hand on the brick, and thinks about spiders. 

“There’s nothing.” Tim’s voice is loud with his panic. “I don’t know how you’re - we should’ve thought of this, fuck.” A thread pulls at the back of Martin’s head. He curls his fingers against the stone. “You can’t climb that Martin, come on, don’t be stupid.” Martin ignores Tim, stepping closer to the wall until his chest is almost pressed against it. He reaches one hand above the other, and presses his shoe against the wall. There’s nothing for him to hold onto or stand on.

“Martin?” Sasha’s voice is light and worried and far away. Martin takes a deep breath, and starts to climb. 

He has no idea how he’s doing it. Long hairs seem to pull out from between the ridges in his fingertips, tugging when they catch on the brick. His own weight is immense, and it pulls him down, but his hands don’t slip, and neither do his feet. His knees graze the stone and his breath falls hot on the concrete between the bricks, and he doesn’t think, he just climbs. Martin reaches the second floor window. There’s a latch inside, and beyond that a dark empty room covered in dust. He reaches for the thread around the latch and pulls, and it opens with a click. He pulls again, and the window slides up and open. Martin drags himself inside, panting. 

Sasha and Tim drift into the room after him. Tim breaks the silence as Martin gets to his feet. “That was creepy as hell.” 

Martin grins and laughs and shakes his head, straightening as the blood rushes back down into his body. “It’s what spiders do.”

“What kind of fucking spiders have you been seeing?”

Martin giggles, and brushes the sweat from his eyes. His hand is caked with dried blood, and he feels a flake or two stick to his temples as he does so. “You have no idea.”

“The door is this way.” Sasha interrupts, from the corner of the room. In the shadows only half of her is visible, and she looks far more ghostly than she has in almost all the time Martin’s seen her: pale and faded and clinging to a semblance of form in the dark. An old, unpainted, unvarnished wooden door sits hidden behind her, and Martin walks through the dust towards it, leaving footprints on the floor. Sasha moves out of his way, and he wraps his fingers around the rusting metal, pushing the handle and wincing when it creaks. He swings the door open onto a dark, narrow staircase. Tim and Sasha drift ahead of him with a kiss of icy air, and Martin shivers.

Martin hesitates at the top of the staircase, looking for an oil lamp. His mind is wild with images of worms in the dark, silently running up the staircase in an awful tide, rippling around his ankles and up his trousers, chewing into his flesh. Tim and Sasha look back up at him, and their eyes present an imitation of humanity, half-bright in the dark. “Don’t worry.” Tim says, holding out his hand. Martin takes it, and it’s like trying to hold cold air. Still, somehow, it’s reassuring. He stares at the faded image of a hand in his, and breathes, and tries to find his courage. Sasha smiles at him, and her smile is white and translucent. 

“We’ll guide you.”

With a deep breath, Martin starts to walk down the staircase. Every step creaks as he goes, and the walls are damp with mildew. They press in close around him, and the ceiling is low enough to force him to duck his head. After a minute or two, his eyes adjust, and he can make out a thin thread of silver light creeping under the closed door at the bottom of the staircase. Martin keeps breathing, and his breath is far too loud in the quiet. 

“One more step.” Tim’s voice is soft, pressed into a whisper by the silence. The further they get down the stairs, the louder the worms are, writhing and squelching and creeping through the brickwork and the wood. Martin can hear the sound of a hundred thousand tiny vicious mouths eating their way through everything this place had been, and even the sound of it seems to bite, sinking into the soft flesh of his inner ears until all there is is the crunching fleshy chewing of the worms wriggling into his brain. 

Martin steps down from the last creaking wooden stair and onto the ground floor. There’s half a foot of space between him and the door in the dark. Sasha and Tim stand either side of him in the cramped space, the edges of their arms leaving a wake of aching cold in his skin. The space is thick with dust and dry wood. “You might want to knock.” Tim suggests. “He’s. Sort of on edge.”

Martin huffs a faint laugh. When he speaks it's a whisper. “You don’t say.”

Slowly, he lifts his hand. He thinks about sitting in his flat three years ago. He waits for worms to start wriggling through the door frame. They don’t, and so he takes a deep breath and ignores the burning ache at the base of his throat and the sticking pull of the wad of web there. He knocks. The sound is hollow as a coffin. 

After a long, long moment in which there’s no sound but the loud rasp of Martin’s breath in the tiny, quiet space and the writhing of the worms in the building around them, Jon’s voice rings out, hesitant and high with fear. “Helen?”

Martin’s hand is already on the flaking rust of the door handle. He pulls the bolt and pushes the door open, into the kitchen. Jonathan Sims is standing inside, clutching a corkscrew so tightly his dark skin is yellow around the metal. Martin tries to smile, and beside him Sasha and Tim disappear. “I’ll do you one better?”

* * *

It’s like striking a chord and letting it hang in the air, shivering between them. For a long, long moment Jon stares at Martin, eyes wide and face pale with fear, clutching the corkscrew to his chest like a weapon. And then he drops it and he’s rushing forwards and hitting Martin’s chest and Martin doesn’t have time to think about how it hurts because Jon’s arms are wrapped around him and his shoulders are shaking and he’s sobbing into Martin’s shoulder. 

Martin stares, and his eyes sting, and the world spins and rights itself, and then he’s burying his face in Jon’s hair, which is greasy and unwashed and Martin doesn’t care because it’s him. He squeezes his eyes shut and wraps his arms around Jon’s narrow shoulders and holds him tightly, and for half a second everything goes away and all there is is the warmth of Jon around him and in his arms. 

“God. God I thought you were dead, I thought I was going to die, I thought I was never going to see you again, Martin. Christ. Martin.” Jon’s words are muffled against Martin’s shirt, a string of mumbled desperate confessions as his fingers twist in Martin’s shirt, pulling it hard against his back as he shakes. Martin kisses the top of his head without thinking, shushing him as he holds Jon close. Jon breathes, and it’s a wet painful sound, and he pulls back and looks up at Martin. His cheeks are wet with tears and his nose is running and his eyes are red, and Martin doesn’t care, he’s still the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. “I have so much to tell you. I -”

Tim suddenly appears to Martin’s left, and Martin jumps and Jon jumps too, following his gaze to the empty air. “You need to get out of here now, they’ve hit the second floor.” The door to the staircase swings shut with a bang. “Me and Sasha are going to bar this one - they hate the cold. But you need to do something.”

Martin stares. “What am I supposed to do?” Tim doesn’t answer, flickering out of existence again. There’s no window in the kitchen: it’s dark save for the flickering yellow light of the lamp that Jon’s set on the counter. Outside the door to the office, the worms are a squelching swarm. The door to the staircase is quiet, but Martin shuffles Jon away from it anyway, into the centre of the cramped space. 

“Is that Tim?” Jon asks, urgently, voice hoarse with his tears. Martin nods, and Jon stares at the space where Tim had been. “What’s he saying?”

Martin shakes his head, turning to Jon and holding his shoulders. “He’s gone now. Listen, can you think of anything we can do to get past these things?”

Jon frowns. “Don’t you think I would have done it if I did?” His voice is biting with his sarcasm, and Martin rolls his eyes, knowing it for the fear that it is. Jon’s gaze falls to Martin’s neck, and the blood sticking to his skin and shirt. Immediately, he softens, brow twisting in concern as he steps forward and lays his palm over the base of Martin’s neck. Martin shivers for an entirely ordinary reason as Jon’s fingers brush the bare skin exposed by his tattered shirt. “What happened?”

Martin can feel the pull of the question in his mind, but he carefully pushes it away. His fingers twitch, and he shakes his head. “I’ll tell you later.” He lets go of Jon, hands trailing on his shirt sleeves, reluctant to move away so soon after getting him back. But neither of them are going to survive this if they stand and wait for the inevitable. So instead he starts opening the cupboards. “Is there nothing you can think of? Maybe acid or something? Like a pesticide.”

Outside of the office, there’s suddenly a voice. It was human once, and it is no longer, wriggling and writhing with the thousand things twisting up its throat and dripping with little thumps to the ground as it speaks. “Come out come out wherever you are. We just want to play.” Jane Prentiss croons over her swarm, and Martin barely makes it to the sink before he throws up. 

Jon is with him in a moment, rubbing his back with quick, anxious movements, too hard and too fast to really be soothing. There’s a sudden rustling crescendo from the right hand side of the room, and both of them look towards the door to the staircase as a slithering thumping swarm of worms begins to descend from the second floor. The wood creaks and splinters as it comes, and in the office proper the whispering squelch of the worms come closer with their mother and her wriggling footsteps. 

Martin groans, and wipes the sick from his mouth with water from the tap and his shirtsleeve, too exhausted to be embarrassed by it. “God I hate her.” Jon’s hand stops moving on his back, and Martin can feel the weight of his gaze, piercing and heavy and so familiar it hurts.

“You’ve encountered her before.” 

Martin nods, and stands back from the sink. “Before this. Well. Let’s say it was my initiation. I didn’t know how to fight her then and I don’t now, for all Peter’s bloody lessons.” 

Jon hesitates, and Martin turns to him, watching the way his eyes flicker to the wall, his eyelids fluttering as he takes a quick, shallow breath before he looks up at Martin. “I mean. Cold, is effective against them. If you could - the fog,” Martin shakes his head before Jon can finish, and gestures to the sticky bandage of web on his throat. 

“Not an option.” He laughs, then, hopeless and angry and exhausted and afraid, pulling at his hair hard enough to hurt. “Three years of nothing but ice and denial, and the one time I actually need it I don’t have it. Figures, doesn’t it?”

Jon frowns, dark brows pulling his forehead into a rumpled mess of wrinkles. “But - I’m, don’t misunderstand me, I’m glad that you’re here.” Jon pauses, and wets his lips, and for a second he doesn’t look afraid, just shy and earnest and hesitating, fingers curled against his thighs. “I’m truly glad. I’ve. I’ve missed you.” Martin stares, and he wants to say something, and he has no idea what it will be but he’s willing to find out. But then Jon clears his throat, and he looks away, eyes running anxiously over the seams of the door to the office. “But if there’s nothing that you can do then - why are you here?”

All at once, Martin knows. 

The panic recedes from his mind like an ocean from the shore, and he stands a little taller, uncurling the hunch of his shoulders that he’d barely noticed in all the fear and madness. He steps towards Jon, and he smiles, and he tries to tell him everything he can’t put into words. Jon catches his breath. Martin touches his cheek, and Jon’s eyelids flutter, and he closes his lips for a moment before they part. His face is warm, and Martin can feel the sharp curve of his cheek bone just under the base of his fingers. “Listen, Jon. Whatever web Elias has caught you in, whatever the hell this is supposed to be - I’m with you till the end, and anything that comes after.” Gently, he strokes Jon’s cheek with his thumb. 

The smell of rot is overpowering, and the creeping clicking slide of the worms is only getting louder, but for a second, in the space between their bodies, there’s a moment of silence - and it’s clean and bright and human. A flicker of a frown passes over Jon’s face like a cloud before the sun, and he curls his hand around Martin’s wrist, head tilting into his touch. Two of his fingers press into the thin skin of Martin’s inner arm. “You’re not - Martin. Are you,” Martin can feel Jon waiting for a pulse that will never come. “You’re already dead, aren’t you?”

Martin sighs. “Three years ago, Peter Lukas gave me a choice between death and loneliness. And," Martin hesitates, "In my fear, in my cowardice, in my hopelessness, I chose loneliness. But I want to make a different choice, now." Martin smiles, and blinks, and ignores the way his eyes are burning as Jonathan Sims looks up at him, all messy curls and dark eyes and sharp angles that belie the great warmth of his heart. "It’s going to be alright, Jon. I’m so glad I met you.” Then he bends, and kisses Jon’s cheek. Jon’s skin is warm and soft against his lips, and for a second Martin shuts his eyes, holding the hitch in Jon’s breath close to his chest like some precious thing. Then he pulls back, and turns away from Jon, towards the door to the office. 

Jon stands, frozen, for a moment, and it’s all the time Martin needs. He puts his hand on the door handle, and turns it. Jon starts to speak, but it’s too late, “Martin - what are you - NO!”

Martin opens the door, and an avalanche of worms falls down over his head, burying him alive as Jane Prentiss’ hands dig into his shoulders. Martin shuts his eyes. It hurts. A thousand thousand tiny things burrow biting and pinching and clawing into his skin, through his muscles and his organs and into his bones. They crawl through his hair and push into his mouth and his ears and his nose.

The only thing left binding Martin to the life he never really wanted is the fog inside of him, and it rises up like a hurricane, freezing and ravenous. The ice spreads through his soul and out of his chest, storming into the air around him. He hears Jane Prentiss start to scream. Martin feels himself falling apart, feels his bones crumbling as chunks of him fall into the swarm piece by piece even as it freezes. He can hear the tap of the worm’s bodies clattering to the floor, and then can hear nothing at all as they eat his eardrums. The worms dig into his eyes, and it’s agony, but Martin has no voice left with which to weep.

Then there’s nothing but silence, and darkness. And Martin Blackwood is consumed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I did not have time to think about how fully I was giving myself to the Mother, as I used her gifts again and again. It did not matter. All that I knew was that I needed to save you, as I had before. As I had failed to do before. I would not let Prentiss have you, the way she had taken me. I was dead anyway. I had died three years previous, in my flat, of dehydration, whilst Jane Prentiss and her worms laid siege from the outside and no one came to save me. No one even thought to look, including my damned mother, for all her complaints of my absence. Instead Peter Lukas offered me a deal, and fool that I was, I took it. If this second life had served for nothing else than to save yours, then it would have been worth living._


	24. Saviour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not over yet. 
> 
> [But if you want a full explanation, I wrote a Tumblr post here!](https://auralqueer.tumblr.com/post/190621253543/authors-note-on-the-reminiscences-of-martin) Please be aware that the Major Character Death tag still stands - it's a death that has happened in canon, to a major character in this fic. It's just not referring to what happens in chapter 23. Please proceed with care.

Everything is black. 

Martin’s eyes are shut - except he doesn’t have eyes any more. He supposes that if he’s a ghost his mind, or the echo of it, will give him an imitation of his eyes. They certainly feel real. And the darkness behind them is lightening, until he can almost feel the brightness of whatever sits beyond the shadows of his skin. 

Martin breathes, and it doesn’t hurt. The ache in his neck is gone. His skin feels cool, and intact, tight and elastic around his flesh. Martin had never really thought about it before, but now the tight seam of his skin over his arms and belly and legs and back is strangely comforting. He keeps breathing. He doesn’t think he’s really breathing, doesn’t think there’s any point in it in the ordinary human way. He imagines the lectures he’s seen, about oxygen in the blood and the effects of its lack. He breathes, and his mind tells him that his lungs fill, and there’s a primal, simple comfort in that, despite the fact that he knows his blood has been still and cold for nearly three years, and whatever is left now is only an echo of a dead thing.

Martin opens his eyes. The great grey expanse of the Lonely stretches out before him, laid like tissue paper over London, translucent and cold. More immediately, the kitchen of Ghost Hunt UK is distant as a far off shore, and the wall stands within reach of his finger tips. Martin blinks, and breathes, and watches the imitation of cold mist fall in front of his lips. The door to the kitchen is open, and there’s a pile of dead worms on the floor like so much crumbled gravel. Martin feels himself relax. 

He did it.

He braces himself, and turns, ready to see Jon weeping and already wondering whether he can push through the veil and into the world like Tim and Sasha had. But Jon isn’t crying. He isn’t moving. Instead, he’s collapsed on the floor, arm flung out, head lolling. There’s a small patch of darkness by his head that Martin thinks might be blood. 

The strange simple peace of the cold that had settled inside him disappears, and the fog that had been eddying around his knees suddenly roils, pulling against him with icy force like white water, swirling up and over his waist and torso. Martin pushes through it, feeling the cold burn through every part of him as he tries to reach Jon, grasping uselessly with his intangible hands. He’s so focused on reaching Jon, faded and veiled as he is by the cold fog of loneliness between them, that he doesn’t notice Elias. 

Martin doesn’t notice Elias until Elias walks through him, and Martin hisses as the faint heat of him burns. Elias crouches down, slipping his hands under Jon’s legs and shoulders and lifting him like a child. Martin shakes his head. “No! NO! No, you  _ can’t _ ! LEAVE HIM ALONE!  _ STOP!! _ ” He’s screaming, and he doesn’t care. The Lonely stretches out around him like a great arctic waste. Martin rushes at Elias, ignoring the burn of him, and it does nothing. Jon’s head rests against Elias’ arm, and his face is slack and vulnerable in sleep. His eyelids are twitching. 

Martin thinks of the first time he met Jon, months ago. He thinks about him lying in bed without a heartbeat, dreaming. He shakes his head. He’s crying, and he doesn’t know why he still can and wishes that he couldn’t. What justice let ghosts weep, still? Hadn’t they left that suffering behind with the constraints of their bodies?

Elias walks to the door, and Martin cries out as he steps over the worms, moving to follow him. The fog roars and whirls around him like an ocean in a storm, sweeping waves of ice and aching loneliness and grief over his head and through his chest and Martin screams anyway, ignoring the creeping burn of it under his skin.

It was all for nothing. It couldn’t have been for nothing. Elias was going to have Jon, and destroy him, twisting him into an object for his worship and stealing his mind away. There would be nothing left of him and Martin could do nothing about it but watch. So he screams. 

“Really, Martin, this is just embarrassing.”

It’s all the warning Martin has before a strong hand wraps around his arm and hurls him to the ground. Martin chokes, crying out, but Peter Lukas doesn’t stop. He grabs Martin by the shirt, and punches him, hard, and Martin doesn’t know why he can still feel such ordinary pain but his nose buckles and bursts and hot blood streams down his chin. He barely has time to taste it before Peter is punching him again, and again, and all Martin can do is curl up in the fog and shut his eyes and bear the hammer of Peter’s blows against his face and chest and stomach. 

He tries to crawl away, and Peter grabs his hair and tugs him up onto his knees, and Martin grunts and chokes as Peter sinks his knee into his ribcage. Martin feels his not-bones break, and splinter into his lungs, and knows with a grim terrible certainty that he will survive this. That it will go on forever, if Peter so chooses. Peter drops him and kicks his stomach, and Martin yelps and curls up as he presses the heel of his boot down hard on Martin’s ribcage. 

Martin blinks up at Peter, who is framed by the glaring bright white expanse of his god, eyes stormy and grey in a weathered face wreathed by curly hair that blurs into the fog churning around him like a terrible halo. The tide of white cloud topples down and over Martin, freezing him, and he shudders and weeps, mindless in his pain and his grief. Peter’s god roars, pulling his mind apart as it reminds him again and again that his death was pointless. It did nothing. He did nothing, in his petty, wasted life.

Martin’s barely aware of Peter repeating the thoughts in his head, awareness coming in and out of his conscious mind as Peter rains down blows upon him. “You were a waste, Martin. You could have been great! Powerful. Important. And what are you instead? Nothing. You’re  _ nothing _ , and no one is coming to save you.”

Ice runs under Martin’s skin, biting deep into his bones, and Peter raises his boot and Martin shuts his eyes and knows with a terrible, final certainty that he’s right. 

There’s a ringing metal clang, followed by a rustle of fabric and another, heavier thump. 

The blows stop.

The fog recedes.

Martin stays where he is, curled on the ground, bruised and broken and bleeding. He thinks one of his eyes is swollen shut. He waits, wondering whether this is some cruel game of Peter’s, and if he’ll hit him again when he opens his eyes. 

A hand touches Martin’s shoulder, gingerly, and Martin flinches away from it with a whimper. There’s a soft exhalation of breath, and Martin can hear the faintest hint of a voice in it, and he can’t let himself hope because this has to be a trick - this has to be some terrible imitation, brought here to make his abandonment hurt all the more, because he’s dead and he’s trapped and he’s never going to escape. 

Gerry Keay squeezes Martin’s shoulder, softly, and says, “Martin? Are you...I mean you’re not well, but are you in there?”

There’s a strange, flickering warmth coming off Gerry, separate to the burn of his touch. Martin doesn’t flinch from it - it’s not much more pain than anything else he’s had to bear. There’s a soft tug on the tips of his fingers. Martin opens his eyes. 

Gerry Keay is crouched over him, burning. Bright yellow fire flickers around the edges of him, clinging impossibly to his skin without burning him. A smudged abstract oval on his forehead sits in the shape of an eye, and burns its inversion onto Martin’s eyelids when he blinks. Gerry’s clothes are tattered and bloody, and his face is bruised. Next to him, on the ground, is a length of iron pipe. Behind that is Peter Lukas, unconscious in a heap. Power falls from Gerry’s body like sunlight, and Martin can taste the radiation of it in the air between them, bitter and metallic. He squints, and meets Gerry’s eyes, and they’re deep and dark. 

“Gerry?”

Gerry smiles, and it’s a gentle thing. His lips are pink and chapped. He squeezes Martin’s shoulder again, and leans forward, and the flickering light of the flame licks heat over Martin’s clammy skin. “There you are.”

Martin frowns, stiffly moving to push himself up from the cold hard ground, trying to sit up. Gerry leans back, hands hovering around his shoulders to help him. “How?” It hurts to talk, and Martin lifts his sleeve to try and scrub away the worst of the blood, snot and tears smeared over his face. Wordlessly, Gerry offers him a handkerchief, and Martin takes it gratefully, flinching as he presses at his new bruises. “Thank you.”

Gerry nods. The light around him flickers yellow and bright into the fog. Martin thinks he sees the black chalk eye on his forehead blink. “Don’t mention it. In answer to your question - three Leitners and a prayer. But I don’t think it would have worked if Annabelle didn’t like you so much.”

Martin blinks, trying to ignore the pounding in the back of his head. “Who?”

Gerry smiles, and it’s small and terribly sad. “You’ll find out.” He turns his head, and Martin doesn’t know what he’s seeing, but he’s looking in the general direction of The Observer and Martin briefly entertains the notion that Gerry can see it, even from this distance, even through the fog. Gerry turns back to Martin and gets to his feet, urgency wound through the tense jerk of his movements like steel wire. “You need to go.”

Martin takes the hand Gerry offers him, and fire flickers around Gerry’s skin, touching Martin’s hand but not burning him. He stares as it flickers gold and yellow between them. Gerry pulls Martin to his feet, and Martin sways there. Every part of him aches. Gerry keeps holding his hand.

Martin looks around, at the fog coiling and curling around them like a stalking wolf, masking the faint grey lines of London with swathes of white cloud. “I - we can’t, Gerry. I can’t control it.” Martin can feel panic rising in him again, and the fog surges closer with it and that just makes it worse. Gerry squeezes his hand, tightly, and Martin looks at him, breathing shallow and sharp in the base of his throat. 

“I know. It’s alright, Martin. I’m going to get you out of here.” Gerry reaches out, and catches Martin’s other hand, and he’s beautiful, cut in black and gold against the great grey waste of Forsaken. 

Martin stares at him, and his mind is a blank mess of confusion. “How?” Suddenly his brain filters past the memory of Peter’s beating. “Jon, he, Elias -” Gerry squeezes Martin’s hands, and smiles at him. He looks far too peaceful, and Martin glances back down at Peter’s body, wondering whether this really is some kind of trick. The body is gone, melted into the fog. But the pipe is still there, dark and incongruous against the shifting world.

“I know, Martin. That’s why you have to be quick. I’m sending you back to Ghost Hunt UK, but you need to go to The Observer. Elias will have taken Jon there. Beyond that, I don’t know what he’s planning. But you need to stop it.” Gerry gives Martin a crooked smile, and the flames flicker in the reflection of his eyes, copper and bronze and gold. “Go be a hero, Blackwood.”

Unease pushes at the base of Martin’s spine, creeping and cold. The fog prowls closer. “W-what - you’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

Gerry looks down at their hands, and laces their fingers together as he ducks his head. “Ah, no. No, I’m not.”

Martin frowns. “What do you mean?” He knows what Gerry means. Of course he knows. The world of monsters and horror has never been gentle and he knows that. But his mind sees what he knows and flinches away from it like a child from a tragedy. 

Gerry swallows, and Martin watches his throat move, and his rubs his thumbs over Martin’s knuckles. The world is quiet around them. “The thing about three Leitners and a prayer is that, it sort of, eats you up. You couldn’t have got yourself out of here. Only Peter Lukas can do that, and that wasn’t likely. So. We had to find a way to force the door open, and find you.” Martin wants to speak - to interrupt - to ask who this ‘we’ is supposed to be. But Gerry continues, voice soft and calm and sure. “And we did. But an explosion like that needs a hell of a lot of gunpowder and, ah, I’m the gunpowder.” 

Gerry looks up. At first, Martin thinks that it’s his hair clinging to his cheek, but then he sees that it’s a letter, black and inky and crooked. There are more of them now, creeping over his skin in crowded lines, filling up the blank spaces. Martin feels something wet on his hand and looks down, and there’s a smudge of black ink where Gerry had been touching him. The fire flickers, and the ink is bright with its reflection like liquid copper. Martin breathes, and it shakes as he exhales and steps closer. “What’s happening to you?” 

Letters peel away from Gerry’s cheeks and fade into the air around him like smoke. His hair is starting to fragment, dripping down his back. Where the letters go, Gerry’s skin grows translucent, until Martin can make out the rolling tide of the fog behind the thin tissue of his cheek. Gerry lets out a shaky, soft kind of laugh. “I’m, ah, unravelling. Go. Jon needs you.” Gerry gives Martin another crooked smile, and squeezes Martin’s hand, and his grip is weak. He tilts his chin, and Martin turns and follows his gaze and sees a door cut out of the air, a patch of vivid reality in the faded cold of the Lonely. 

Martin turns back to Gerry. The fire is still flickering around the outline of his shoulders, but his edges are frayed and blurred, like worn fabric, or the ragged edges of an old book. “I can’t leave you.” Martin blinks, and tears run hot and wet and fast down his cheeks, and he ignores them. Gerry keeps smiling at him. His eyes are dark as wet ink, and Martin wonders whether there are letters there too. 

“Yes, you can.” Gerry’s voice is distant and deep and soft and echoing strangely now. Letters peel from his skin and melt into the fog. His hands are barely tangible, fingers only a memory of a touch in Martin’s. He tilts his head, and his hair rolls like smoke around his head. “Don’t cry. It’s alright now. I’m  _ free _ . If anything, I should thank you.”

A sob heaves its way out of Martin’s chest, and he shakes his head, wanting to cling to Gerry’s hands and terrified he’ll make it worse. He thinks of the last two years, of every day he’d spent teasing Gerry, and worrying for him, and accepting his worry with a bewildered kind of wonder and a longing so sharp it hurt for the friendship it stood for. Martin weeps. “No. No, you can’t go. This isn’t fair.”

Gerry shuts his eyes, and tiny letters fall from his eyelashes. “It’s never been fair.” He opens his eyes, and steps so close Martin can taste the thick sweet scent of ink. “Go. Let my death mean something, please.” Martin hiccoughs, and there’s the faintest breath of pressure against his fingers as Gerry squeezes his hands. He smiles, and the skin under his eyes creases with the honesty of it. “I’m so glad I met you, Martin.”

Then Gerry bows, and kisses the back of Martin’s hand. Martin watches, and feels the almost imperceptible heat of his lips. The fog rolls around them, and between one breath and the next, with a gust of icy wind, Gerry Keay fades away. 

Martin stares, and chokes, hands still hanging suspended in the air between them. And then he feels the air grow colder, pulling at him, and he turns and sees the door Gerry had made for him, shrinking. Martin squeezes his eyes shut, and curls his hands, and imagines he can hold the memory of Gerry’s touch there in the space between his fingers. 

He runs.

The Lonely spreads out around him, an endless howling landscape of white fog and cold. It drags fiercely at Martin’s waist, pulling like a tide, thickening until he’s blind with it. Martin pushes on, and the closer he gets to the door, the stronger the threads around his fingers feel, until he’s able to wrap his hand around them and pull, like a lifeline, tugging himself closer to his escape against the raging storm, sinking into his bones and chilling him with the memory of every person who’d ever abandoned him. With the knowledge that his closest friend is dead. 

Martin weeps, but he doesn’t stop, and then suddenly he’s there. The kitchen of Ghost Hunt UK is bright in all its dull greys and light wood against the tissue paper grayscale of Forsaken. Martin feels the fog wrapping around his hips and waist and thighs and pulling him back. He thinks of Gerry Keay.

With a shout, Martin hurls himself out of the Lonely and back into the world. He tumbles onto the floor, knees hitting the ground hard with a stinging ache. It’s not a hot day, but the room feels positively tropical against the pressing chill of the Lonely. Martin turns onto his back, and looks back up at the doorway, and with a pressure that makes his ears pop it winks out of existence. Martin lies on his back on the kitchen floor, chest heaving.

His body feels heavier, somehow, more solid, and as lucidity returns to him he realises that his injuries are gone. Gingerly he touches his face, feeling for the bruises and blood that had been there only moments before. His skin is intact and untouched. Martin frowns, moving to press his hand over his shoulder. The ridges of the scars Peter had given him are stiff and taut on his back. Martin lowers his hand, listening to his own heavy breathing. And then, beneath that, he hears a sound it takes him a second to recognise. In the silence, for the first time in three years, Martin can hear the rushing of his own blood, fast as a river and dulled. Shaking, Martin presses a hand to his chest, though he barely needs to - because now he’s thinking about it, he can feel the rapid, persistent thump of his heartbeat. 

Martin gasps, and he doesn’t know if he wants to be sick or to cry or to laugh. Instead he sits, hand pressed to his chest through the soft cotton of his shirt. 

And then Tim flickers into existence in front of him. 

“Oh thank Christ, you’re back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I knew that Peter would take me. Ghosts are not safe from Forsaken, and I had spent three years living a haunted existence. I had made peace with it, though I could not have anticipated the agony of his fury, for all the times he had unleashed it upon me before. And then Gerry was there, and he saved me, burning like Prometheus spiting the Olympians. I will not say they took him from me, because they did not win. Gerry Keay broke the laws of the gods, and with them the chains by which they bound him. He died. But I believe he died free. _


	25. Inhuman Sacrifice

Something is terribly wrong. This is hardly surprising: something, in Martin’s experience, is always terribly wrong. But when he gets outside of Ghost Hunt UK, picking his way over the gravel heaps of worm carcasses, and sees the glaring not-light of power lancing its way into the sky above London half a city away, he thinks perhaps that after this nothing, terrible or otherwise, will ever happen again. 

It’s not just the great column of power sending shivering energy out across the rooftops in great waves like a mirage, around which clouds are gathering as a storm does around its eye. Everyone is staring at him. 

Martin feels heavy, and hot, and noisy, as he hasn’t in nearly three years. He couldn’t disappear if he wanted to, and he knows that now because he very desperately wishes to do so. Instead, he stumbles to a halt on the street as hundreds and hundreds of strangers mill past, staring at him. Many turn wholly around, apparently unconcerned by what obstacles they might hit whilst walking in such a fashion. Eyes upon eyes upon eyes are fixed upon him, and Martin’s skin crawls with the sensation of it. Some people are crying, others are pale, and some are so red they’re puce. Martin sees a man with an expensive looking waistcoat, gritting his teeth, eyes bloodshot as they stare. He sees a child, her long braids lifting in the unnatural wind, tears and snot streaming down her pale face as her wide brown eyes look up at him. The thrall is sickening, but it does highlight those few unaffected by it. Like rats smoked out of hiding, Martin catches half a dozen avatars hurrying down the street and away from the power breaking the sky. 

A man with a wide brimmed hat presses close to the buildings on the other side of the street, and there are no shadows left to hide him. A woman, soaking wet and smelling of Thames-water, hurriedly pushes an overloaded wheelbarrow of mud and trash over the cobbles. The rattling is loud in the too-quiet street. A tall woman with broad shoulders who smells of fresh blood shoves Martin aside, and leaves his mouth thick with the taste of flesh. And then another woman jumps onto his horse. Martin shouts, “No, wait!”

But he’s too late: the horse’s reins fall away with a sizzling hiss and the horse screams as the women slaps it, leaving a charred handprint on its rear before it breaks into a bolt, hooves slipping on the cobbles.

“Well shit,” Tim says, appearing beside Martin. The not-light of the Beholding strikes straight up through his body, leaving him translucent as clouded glass. Martin looks away, curling and uncurling his hands, feeling a cold sweat running like a fever down his spine. 

“What do we do now?” His voice feels too loud, and he has the irrational urge to hush it, still conscious of the staring sleepwalkers milling past them down the street. Where they’re going or where they’ve come from Martin doesn’t know. He wonders whether there’s some part of the monkeys in their brains screaming at them of the disaster that their human minds cannot comprehend, cannot parse the way an animal can into the simple reality of death. 

“I have an idea.” 

“Christ Almighty.” Martin jumps, slipping on the stone. Tim reaches out to steady him, and his hand passes straight through Martin’s arm, leaving an aching cold in its wake. Martin hisses and pulls away, and regrets it when the shadow of Tim’s mouth turns down. Sasha gives him a grey smile. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

Martin barks a laugh at that, gesturing at the parody of sunlight around which the sky is wrinkling over London. “Honestly, you’re fine. What’s your idea?”

Sasha’s brow wrinkles neatly. “Walking will take too long.” Martin hums an agreement. He can already feel the power of the Watcher’s ritual growing: humming through the stones in his feet as spiders and cockroaches and rats crawl up out of the sewers and hurry down the gutters like so much slurry. Sasha continues, glancing up at Tim, “But there’s another way.”

Tim blinks, and raises his eyebrows, folded arms falling slack at his sides. “You think that’ll work?”

Sasha shrugs, her narrow shoulders pulling at the immaterial weight of her dress. “We have to try, right? I mean, what have we got to lose?”

Tim frowns. “Nothing, but -”

“Then that makes three of us.” Martin interrupts, and continues when Tim opens his mouth. “Jon is all I have left. Even if the world survives this, there’s nothing left for me here without him in it.” 

Tim’s mouth turns down, and his chest swells with the imitation of a breath. But Sasha reaches up and rests one small hand on his upper arm. Tim glances down at her, and she squeezes his arm. “It’s his choice.” Tim stares down at Sasha for a long moment, and then sighs, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Alright.” He meets Martin’s gaze. “But you don’t have to do this. We can try to find another way.”

“In what time?” Martin smiles, as gently as he can, and turns back to Sasha. “What did you have in mind?”

Sasha takes a deep breath, and her eyes are grey and faded. “We go through the End.”

Martin blinks, and stares. He can feel his new heart accelerating in his chest, like a bird’s, tiny and too weak for the force of its panic. He swallows, and his throat aches. “R-right. Won’t that kill me?”

“I don’t think so.” Sasha looks back to Tim. He’s biting the inside of his cheek and watching the passers by. They don’t seem to see Tim and Sasha, still focusing all of their attention on Martin. Martin wonders what will happen when they do: how many ghosts of London will at last be seen before they’re finally destroyed. Sasha goes on, “I did this once before. When Tim was alive. It didn’t kill him.”

“It nearly did.” Tim mutters, kicking the kerb. His shoe passes through the gravel. Sasha looks at Martin, and her thin lips are pinched tight and pale.

“There’s a sacrifice. It has to be something important. But it doesn’t have to be your life.”

Martin thinks about what he’s willing to sacrifice for Jonathan Sims. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” Sasha looks at him, and her hair drifts at a different pace to the breeze rushing down the street and pulling aside Martin’s jacket, exposing him to the cold. 

Martin feels himself smile, and something heavy settles in his stomach. “I’m sure.”

Sasha’s strange grey eyes stare into his, and a thousand others do the same. Then Sasha holds out her hand. Tim’s form flickers. She looks up into his dark eyes, and gives him a small smile. “I’ll see you there.” Then Sasha turns from Tim to Martin.

Martin takes her hand. It’s freezing cold, like dipping his hand into the Arctic sea. There’s no weight to it, and he doesn’t grip it so much as perform the action of what such a gesture would be. Sasha’s fingers curl around his, and under her touch his skin grows white and pimpled with the cold. She gives him half a smile. “Take a deep breath.”

Martin has barely registered the command before the world goes black, and he’s falling.

It feels as if it lasts forever. It doesn’t take a second. One moment, Martin’s on the streets of London with a thousand eyes watching him as the sky falls apart. The next, he’s in darkness. Above him, below him, and all around, is nothing but the simplest, deepest black he’s ever seen. It’s too dark for him to make out any sense of boundaries, or borders or dimension, but some strange essential instinct tells Martin that he’s standing in a wide space. That this place goes on forever. 

It’s very cold.

“I’m here.” Sasha’s voice is quiet, and it echoes strangely into the dark. Martin looks down, and she’s standing in front of him, grey and bright as the early morning. She’s still holding his hand, and her touch is painful. Martin swallows, and becomes suddenly, terribly aware that he isn’t breathing. He opens his mouth, and gasps, and chokes, his chest seizing as it searches for oxygen that simply isn’t there. Sasha squeezes his hand, and her touch is suddenly heavy, and solid, in a way that it hadn’t been before. “Martin, stop it. You don’t need that here. Stop trying.” Her voice is loud and firm and it rolls out into the shadows before being swallowed by the dark.

Martin tries to focus, shutting his mouth and waiting for his lungs to stop spasming. It hurts, aching through his chest and throat like a bruise. But finally, finally, his body seems to accept its strange new reality. That, or it has succumbed to the natural state of anything that enters this place. Martin wishes he could have touched Jon with warm hands before losing a living body again. Then he thinks that he won’t be able to touch Jon at all if he doesn’t get to him before Elias is done. That, above anything, is what helps him stand, squeezing Sasha’s fingers in his own despite the way it hurts. 

“Right.” He looks around. Darkness stretches out in every direction. “How do we - ?”

“I know the way.” Sasha tugs on Martin’s hand, and begins walking forward. Martin tries to ignore the uneasy flipping of his gut and follows her. He’s not sure what they’re walking on: it feels solid, and his feet neither stick nor slide on the surface of it. But when he looks down, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s not so much walking on a black floor as in a great dark space which stretches infinitely below him. It gives him a terrible sense of vertigo, and it is with some difficulty that Martin tears his eyes away, focusing instead on the grey misty light of Sasha’s figure in the dark. Her skirts swing powder blue around her feet, and neither of their footsteps make a sound. 

“How far do we have to go?” Martin asks. He can’t tell if he’s speaking loudly or softly. He feels like he should lower his voice. He feels like he should scream. The darkness around him is weightless, and he feels like it shouldn’t be. Like it should be claustrophobic, not comfortable. The chill is sinking into his skin, but he barely notices it any more. He distantly notes how strange it is that he isn’t shivering.

Sasha shrugs, and her dress sways with the movement, leaving a drifting afterimage of grey mist swirling around her silhouette stuck to the back of Martin’s eyelids. “As long as it takes.”

“You said you’d done this before?” Martin isn’t sure why, but he feels suddenly that he needs to avoid thinking about this place for too long. He needs to remember where he came from. 

Sasha nods, staring straight ahead into the dark. “For Tim. He was trapped, in the twisting corridors.”

“Helen.” Martin says, unsurprised and strangely relieved.

Sasha shakes her head. “It was Michael, then. Helen is new.”

This raises more questions than it answers, but Martin decides to save them for later. “How did you save him? You said he was still alive?”

“Yes. It was the Unknowing that killed him.” Sasha looks back at him, and her cheeks are pale and bright as the moon. She smiles. “It was the End he had wished for.” 

“If only all of us were that lucky.” Martin cannot help but feel, oddly, as if he’s making small talk at a garden party. Sasha squeezes his fingers. 

“And you? Your body wasn’t living, when we met.” She asks it gently, and without judgement, as if she were inquiring about the weather or an ailing leg. 

Martin thinks about it. Even doing that hurt, once. But now he feels strangely comfortable with the whole affair. He supposes that makes sense. “I starved. Well, no, I think it was the dehydration that did it. I was - the thing that tried to kill Jon. It came for me first.” He huffs a laugh, and the lack of inhalation afterwards is jarring, despite his long years of not needing it. He’d never had reason to break the habit of breathing before. “I don’t know why. Maybe it just knew nobody would come.” He purses his lips, and blinks, and grins to bare his teeth and push back the way his mouth is trembling. The dark is motionless and silent. “I didn’t. I really thought - ” Martin swallows the lump in his throat, “I really thought someone would. You know?” He looks at Sasha, half expecting an answer. But she keeps walking, silent as a maiden in a woodcut print. “But they didn’t. Eventually, I started running out of...Well, everything. And in the end, I think it was about, two weeks? I could feel it coming. It was, peaceful.” Martin isn’t sure, but he thinks the darkness moves. It’s like some great gentle sigh, some resettling of the atmosphere. He feels his shoulders drop. “It was peaceful. So I got into bed, got my pyjamas on.” Martin laughs again, but this time it’s not so much for Sasha’s sake as it is for his own, imagining the picture he must have made in his flat, wobbling on weak limbs whilst the monster at his door pressed itself oozing into the cracks. “And I lay down. And that was it. I thought I could finally just. Let go.” Martin’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He can almost feel it: the lightheaded dizziness, the swelling of darkness in and out of his vision and his mind. He’d stopped feeling thirst fairly early, he can remember that. The hunger had gnawed at his stomach like a dog on a bone, but the dehydration washed that away with everything else. His bed had never been comfortable, but it felt like heaven that day: giving beneath his aching bones like the finest satin any king had ever owned. He’d lain back, and he’d felt the weight rinsed out of him by sleep like dirt by the rain. 

“And then I woke up.” Martin can feel the loss of it, like a punch to the gut, and suddenly the cold and dark rushes back to him. He slows, and Sasha tugs gently at his hand, like a balloon on a child’s wrist, pulling him into the pitch black sky. “Peter was there. And he offered me a deal.” Martin frowns. He can’t remember how long they’ve been walking for, can’t remember what direction they came from. There’s no way to orient himself here, and he’s suddenly very aware that if Sasha lets go of his hand then he’ll be lost forever. “It had - I wasn’t scared of death before. But, suddenly, I just.” There’s a lurching in his chest, the phantom pain of a heart that has been far too still ever since he opened his eyes to the dark. “I just, didn’t want to go. So I said yes.”

“Do you regret it?” Sasha’s voice is soft and sweet and it sounds strange, framed by the shadows and the cold. 

Martin thinks about it: he thinks about all of his pain, and fear, and all the awful things he’s done. 

And then he thinks about Gerry Keay. He thinks about doing something he wanted to do for the sheer joy of it for the first time in his life. He thinks about sitting in libraries and reading about rainforests. He thinks about handsome Danny Stoker, and walking through London unafraid of the night. 

He thinks about the first time he saw Jonathan Sims. 

“I used to. I don’t anymore.” The temperature drops, suddenly, rapidly. Martin waits for himself to shiver, and doesn’t know how to feel when he doesn’t. He’s never been a dark man, but his skin now is pale as a corpse and blue around the edges. Martin swallows, and his tongue feels cold in his mouth. “Sasha. How much longer?”

“Not far.” Sasha sounds calm, but she starts walking a little faster all the same. Martin hurries to match her pace. There’s something hungry about the darkness now, some pulling weight to it, like a riptide, dragging at his heels. Now when he walks, the shadows beneath his feet are not firm and smooth. Instead they pull at his ankles, dragging up the length of his calves in long icy tendrils. Martin can almost imagine great roots, blacker than the dark, stretching away and around and below him, like the intestines of some terrible beast. 

And then the darkness changes. Martin doesn’t have words for it: it doesn’t brighten, and he can still see no shape or pattern or form within the black. But it changes. Sasha seems to feel it too, because she stops, skirts swinging around her feet. She turns back to Martin, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Martin can see the shell of it through her fingertips. “We’re here.” 

Martin goes to move forward, and stops when Sasha’s hand pulls back, like a rope to a mooring. “Great. How do we leave? Sasha?”

Sasha stares up at him, and her grey eyes are lovely and unreadable. She lets go of his hand.

The darkness swells. It’s like a curtain has been lifted: there’s no visible change, but Martin is suddenly, terribly, desperately aware of how very tiny he is in comparison to the great shadows of the universe. All at once, he knows what creation looks like when the lights go out. And he knows that there is no way to escape it. 

“Sasha?” Martin whirls, and loses his footing, and then he’s falling. There’s no speed to it, no promise of impact, no vertigo. There’s just nothing. His eyes stare and stare and see nothing. His heart tries to beat, his lungs ache to expand. But his body is quiet and still and falling. There’s no sound, no sight, no scent, no taste. He’s falling, forever, and it will never end. He’s so cold. 

_ “There’s a sacrifice. It has to be something important. But it doesn’t have to be your life.” _

Martin isn’t sure if Sasha is actually speaking to him, or if it’s just the memory of her voice in his mind. He makes the executive decision not to care, and speaks out loud just to break the quiet. “What kind of sacrifice? Sasha?”

The darkness doesn’t answer him. 

Martin shuts his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids isn’t warm, any more, but there’s a simple physical comfort to it anyway, in the weighty physicality of the thing he knows to be his self. He presses his lips shut tight, and curls his hands into fists, pushing his legs together and squeezing his arms against his sides, taking comfort in the sensation of any kind of pressure at all. And he tries to think. 

He thinks about Peter Lukas. He thinks about the gaping grey void of the Lonely. Martin thinks about the Beholding, and the heavy weight of the Eye. He thinks about spiders. He stops falling. 

Martin bounces, softly, as all at once he’s caught in a thousand, thousand beautiful silver threads. He opens his eyes, and stares. They stretch glittering into the infinite void, and the part of him that’s hungry and curious and _ staring _ wants desperately to know where they end. Cautiously, Martin runs the palm of his hand over a handful of threads beside his right arm. They shiver, silk and cool under his touch. He wraps his fingers around them, and pulls, and the web shifts: setting him upright and onto his feet, standing on the threads below him like a trapeze artist. Martin grins, full, suddenly, of the certainty that he’ll never fall again. He’ll never be alone again. He’ll never want, or long, or grieve or mourn. He never has to lose. He never has to hurt. Everything can be exactly the way he wants it to be. 

And then: far, far below him, so far that he could tell himself it was a trick of the light, or a mote of dust, or some blurring of his vision, Martin sees a very faint speck of grey light. His heart falls. The adrenaline rushing up through his spine peters out and leaves him empty and hollow. He looks at the webs: neat and beautiful and spreading out like a cradle, keeping him suspended in the dark. He looks down again, at the very faint hint of light that is Sasha James. That was Sasha James, years ago, when she lived. For one moment, Martin considers it. He thinks about staying here. He thinks about giving in to the Web, and every gift it offers him. He thinks about being safe, and powerful, and not worrying about the world or all the terrible people in it. 

Silently, he starts to cry. 

Then Martin takes a deep breath, and reaches out with his other hand, and grabs the threads and pulls. They stretch under his fingers, giving as silk, and Martin grits his teeth and twists his hands and pulls harder until they break with a sudden, terrible snapping that he feels deep in his core. The webs spring back, fluttering for one brief frayed moment. Then the darkness crashes down over his head, and he drowns. 

* * *

Martin Blackwood opens his eyes. 

The first thing that he notices is that his heart is beating. It feels heavy and clumsy in his chest, thumping too hard and too fast against his ribcage. The second thing he notices is that he’s breathing. The air rushing into his mouth and lungs is like spring water, full of the taste of stone and rain and something that fizzes like lightning. The third thing Martin notices is that he’s shivering, violently, and his teeth are chattering so hard it hurts.

In a word: he’s alive.

London looms before him. The Observer’s offices stand mere feet away. A thousand eyes prickle down the back of his neck, staring at him, and Martin ignores them. The not-light of power pouring up and out of the building into the sky is like a fountain or a fire, and this close he can see that the clouds are not forming a circle. Instead, they twist and eddy around a bright patch of nothing, like a hole cut out of reality, in a crude almond shape. Like an eye.

Martin swallows, and it hurts, and he relishes the pain because it means that he’s alive. He doesn’t think when he reaches down for the threads at his fingertips, and nearly falls forward when there’s no tension to greet him: only the phantom memory of broken strings fluttering in the growing wind. Sasha looks at him. “How does it feel?”

Martin shakes his head. “We need to go inside.”

Tim is already ahead of them, framed by the heavy dark wood doors of the newspaper offices. “I think I know where they are.” 

Martin runs up the steps two at a time, despite every instinct in his brain screaming at him to turn and run as far and fast as he can. Sasha follows him like a shadow. Martin gets to the doors and presses his palms against the wood, throwing them open and into the lobby. The looping pattern of ovals and circles on the floor blink up at the mighty eye in the ceiling, bubbling with life. Tim is already halfway across the stone, and Martin follows without a second thought, trying not to think about the wet squelch and uneven slide of the floor beneath his feet. 

He gets onto the marble of the corridor beyond, and Tim flickers in and out of reality ahead of him, down the white stone, spotlit by the half-light pouring in through the hall's tall windows. Martin can’t shake the feeling that they’re mere dolls in a toy house, or fish in a tank. He focuses instead on the burning of his breath in his lungs, and the heavy smack of his shoes on the stone. They pass his old office: the door is still half open, and Martin feels a terrible stabbing pain of grief as he glimpses the forest green walls. 

But then Tim turns a corner, and Martin is running after him, shoes slipping with the slime still clinging to his soles. Tim turns another corner, and Martin swears under his breath as he follows. “Of course.” He comes to a skidding halt next to Tim’s shadow in front of an open door. The neat bronze plaque nailed into the wood reads _ The Editor. _ Martin tries not to look at the corner where he’d left Gerry what feels like hours before, or the blood staining the floor and furniture. 

Tim flickers behind the desk and crouches down. “Here! There’s a trapdoor.” His voice is too loud in the cramped space and the child in Martin flinches at the thought of someone hearing them. He pushes it away, and follows Tim around the desk, crouching down and slipping his hands under the seam Tim has shown him. It’s not a light door, but it gives with a terrible screech. 

Martin grunts, letting the trap door fall into the floor with a soft thud. “So much for getting in undetected.” 

Behind him, Tim snorts. “Somehow, I don’t think that was ever an option.”

Martin nods, and stares down at the rough cut stone steps before him which disappear into some distant darkness. He can feel the power in the air now, like the electricity of lightning just before it strikes. He rubs his sweating palms against his trousers, and looks up. “Is there a -?”

“Here.” Sasha interrupts, pointing to a slanted bookshelf. An oil lamp has tumbled onto its side on the wood, and Martin crosses the short distance to take it, fumbling for a match from a box beside it on the shelf. He lights the thing with numb fingers, then steps down into the darkness before his instincts get the better of him.

Tim flickers through him, and Martin’s spine aches with the cold of it. In the flickering of the candle-light, Tim is barely a suggestion of a man: only a hint of dark hair here, and the curve of a broad shoulder there. Martin focuses on the steps, they’re not always the same height, and he’s endlessly afraid of losing his footing and falling to a violent, ungainly end before he reaches the bottom. 

After too long: impossibly long, there’s a light in the darkness. And then there’s another. Yellow pinpricks of torchlight flicker distantly below him, and Martin starts walking faster. The darkness lightens, softening with amber as the flames grow closer, until at last Martin can see the end of the staircase, and a beautiful red brick tunnel leading to an intersection. Torches are set in black iron brackets on either wall, and they crackle softly, flickering in a faint breeze that comes from nowhere. Martin lowers the brass oil lamp in his hand and looks back up at the staircase behind him. The trapdoor is nothing but a distant patch of grey sky. 

“Come on! It’s this way!” Tim’s voice bounces around and around the brick of the tunnel, not echoing as it would in Helen’s distorted corridors, but reverberating far too loudly in the quiet. Martin flinches and hurries to follow him, trying desperately to ignore the prickle of the hairs on the back of his neck, and the weight of being watched on his shoulders. 

Sasha’s freezing touch through Martin’s wrist guides him to the left, and he catches half of Tim’s shadow between two torches some twenty feet ahead of him. The tunnels are dry and warm and very still, and there’s no visible sign of what’s about to happen, but Martin can feel it prickling through his skin and into his bones like a current that only grows stronger the further they go. It’s sharp and fizzing, not hot or cold exactly, but stinging like the kiss of broken glass just before it breaks skin. 

When Tim finally stops in front of a pair of elaborate double doors, dark and wooden and blinking with a thousand dark wooden eyes, Martin hardly needs him to. This close, the power pouring out of whatever lies behind those doors is as bright and burning as a house fire. Martin steps forward, and feels his legs pulled back as if by some mighty current. Every hair on his body is standing on end, and his eyes itch and he can’t shut them, no matter how hard he tries. His fingertips and toes are numb with power, and his tongue tastes like glass and steel. Martin blows out the oil lamp and sets it on the ground. Tim falls back to stand beside him, and Sasha steps up to his right. 

Martin stares at the doors. A thousand eyes stare back. There is no fog. There are no threads. Martin Blackwood is painfully, terribly human. He listens to the blood rushing through his skull, and feels the heavy weight of his heart in his chest, and he thinks about Jonathan Sims.

He opens the doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And then somehow I was alive again, and the world was ending, and you weren’t with me. So I walked into the valley of the shadow of death, and I tasted the comforts of the End, and I learned how neatly the Mother had woven her web for me. And I wanted it, Jon. I wanted it so badly it still hurts to think about. But I needed you more keenly than anything she could give me, and I could not escape the End without paying its sacrifice. So I let her go, and I gave it up, and I lived. For you. _


	26. The Matter of the Watcher's Crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now updated to include [ this incredible fanart ](https://marina-does-things.tumblr.com/post/190859649746/finally-done-with-this-illustration-of-the-amazing) from the wonderful [ Marina Vermillion! ](https://marina-does-things.tumblr.com/)

It’s a cathedral. The doors swing open silently, with a soft rush of cool air, and hang open on a mighty grey stone hall. Martin stares. The hall stretches out over a hundred feet ahead of him, and he cannot quite make out what lies at its end: a dais, of some sort, with something on it. Behind it is a massive floor-to-ceiling frieze, covered in winding etchings Martin cannot decipher from this distance. The roof of the place is some eighty feet above him, and Martin cannot help but feel terribly, terribly small. There’s no light source he can see: no torches, and no windows. But the whole place is bright with grey light, as on a clouded day or filtered through thick glass. There are no shadows here, no crannies in which to hide. 

Martin steps inside. His footsteps are loud on the stone, and beside him Tim and Sasha follow, their forms flickering. Martin frowns at them. “Are you alright?”

Sasha shrugs, and the edges of her bend and twist. “It’s like swimming upstream. Not comfortable, but not impossible.”

Martin nods, and realises that he’s hunching his shoulders. He lifts his chin, and stands up straight and tall. The Eye might kill him, but he refuses to let it do so quietly. His arms swing at his sides as he walks, and he waits for the end of the hall to resolve itself into any kind of detail. To his left and right, great looming white marble sculptures, some fifteen feet tall, populate mighty alcoves. Behind them detailed twisting friezes stretch all the way up to the ceiling, grey stone windows into some terrible world of writhing bodies and screaming faces. The sculptures cast no visible shadow and Martin cannot help but shiver beneath them regardless. 

He’s halfway down the hall when he catches movement to the right of the throne. Martin falters, momentarily, and both Tim and Sasha press closer to him. Tim’s voice is quiet and faltering when he speaks, as if caught and muddled by a strong wind. “It’s - alright. We’re here, Martin. We’re with you.” Martin looks at him, and lets one of his hands briefly pass through Tim’s. Tim gives him a flickering smile. They keep walking. 

A great sculpture of a woman, smiling beatifically with her hands spread wide, palms facing upward, stands to their left. Her body is riddled with insects, crawling in and out of terribly detailed burrows in her flesh. Each worm and maggot and leech is bigger than Martin’s head, and he can’t shake the sense that their bodies are shifting as he passes them. He keeps walking, and doesn’t change his pace. He won’t run from Filth again. It doesn’t scare him any more. 

Most of the friezes are full of detail: hundreds and hundreds of fallen people, twisted and broken in a thousand different ways. But the only detail on the next frieze is one person: painfully small, beautifully executed, crouched on their knees with their head in their hands. They’re surrounded by a field of empty stone and beyond that a radius of graves, growing more and more densely populated until the edges of the stone are almost black with memorials to the dead. In front of the frieze is a sculpture of an androgynous figure, melting and twisting into fog, as if the sculptor had dipped their fingers into the marble and pulled, blurring any detail about them which may otherwise have been remembered. Martin doesn’t need the choking kiss of fog to know which power this represents. He doesn’t stop. 

Martin has passed the first ten alcoves by the time he can make out the throne, and a slender human finger lain upon it like some strange pieta. For the first time, Martin changes his pace, feet matching the rhythm of his racing heart. He catches movement again to the right, and is unsurprised to see Elias, slender and well dressed and handsome, despite the blood on his shirt sleeves. Martin’s hands curl into fists, and mentally he curses himself for not bringing any kind of weapon. To his left, Sasha’s lips are pursed, her grey eyes fixed on his editor. Martin wonders what weight the fury of a restless spirit holds in a place like this.

The twelfth alcove is the Mother. Her arms are outstretched, palm down, and thousands of impossibly fine stone threads drip from her fingers like a puppeteer, pulling back and up to the frieze behind her. On the wall a beautiful geometric web stretches up and out, to the ceiling and the walls, presented in such a way that it gives the illusion of far greater depth and reach than it could possibly contain within the stone upon which it has been set. Martin’s heart aches with something like loss, looking up at the dancing figures playing amidst the threads. They look happy. He slows, and Tim and Sasha slow beside him. 

Tim shudders. “They’re crying.” 

Martin narrows his eyes. The faces of the dancers are rendered beautifully in miniature and on closer inspection, Tim’s right: their mouths are smiling, but there are neat erratic tear tracks running down their faces, frozen in the shadow of the stone. He feels his stomach flip, and steps back, looking up at the Mother’s peaceful face, her full lips and long braided hair. The Mother’s stone eyes look down at him, and Martin cannot look away.

“Ah, Mr Blackwood. Enjoying the statuary? I admit, I never took you for the artistic type.” Elias’ voice is oily and loud in the quiet dust of the cathedral. Tim, Sasha and Martin whirl to face him, and Martin tries to ignore the sense of something many-legged and staring creeping up his back.

Tim’s lips pull back in a snarl. “Stay away from him.” Between one heartbeat and the next, Tim flickers and rushes at Elias with terrifying speed and a gust of air so cold it takes Martin’s breath away. Sasha leans forward, lifting her skirts, as if she’s about to do the same. Martin watches, wide eyed, waiting for Tim’s impact. 

But Elias just lifts one hand, lazily, like a conductor, and rolls his pallid grey eyes. “Ghosts, really? How tiresome.” Elias brushes the backs of his fingers through the air, and both Tim and Sasha blur and disappear like paint from a window pane. Martin makes some sort of sound - he’s not sure what, but he finds himself retreating, back exposed, to the Mother of Puppets behind him. Elias smiles at him, and his teeth are neat and pink in places with blood from earlier. His dark, honey-coloured hair is ruffled and out of place, and his shirt is torn. He looks relaxed. Martin’s skin crawls. “Don’t worry, Mr Blackwood, I have no intention of hurting you. It’s much more fun if you watch.” Elias’ smile grows, widening like the exposed teeth of a skull, with no lips with which to mute the bestial reality of so much sharpened bone. 

Then he steps back, again like nothing so much as a conductor, and gestures with one elegant hand to the dais on which the throne stands above the hall, grey and bare and modest in the midst of so much opulence. Behind it, a great wheel depicts thirteen of the fears, subjected to one huge, terrible eye. Martin swallows, and his throat feels like sandpaper. Elias’ eyes fold into creases at the corners as he smiles. His fingers are half crooked in the air, knuckles still bloody from the fight. “You came here for Jon, I presume?”

Martin lowers his gaze from the frieze to the throne itself. It’s plain grey stone, and on it Jon’s body lies limp and awkward and broken. His rich brown skin is pale with sickness, his eyes are shut, and his hair is mussed in a crown around his head. Martin runs to him, and doesn’t even think to give Elias the wide berth he should. Elias chuckles as he moves past him. 

Martin climbs up the steps of the dais blindly and feels as if he’s scaling a mountain. Jon looks terribly small, propped up on the stone, and for once Martin doesn’t hesitate to take him into his arms. Jon’s body is slender and cool, and he doesn’t move when Martin touches him. Martin tries to ignore the jackrabbit racing of his heart as it tries to find its way into his throat, even as his hands start to shake. “Jon? Jon, I need you to wake up now, alright? I’m here. I’m here, I came back! I found you, and everything’s -” there’s a great cracking rumble, and Elias’ head snaps up to the distant ceiling, smile wide and rapturous. Martin squeezes Jon’s arms and ignores him. “Just, just wake up. Please wake up, Jon, I need you.” Martin purses his lips to try and stop them trembling, and blinks rapidly, because he can’t cry now. He hasn’t lost. He can’t have lost. 

Shaking, Martin leans down, and presses his ear to Jon’s chest. Jon’s shirt is soft and cool beneath his ear, and his chest is hard and boney. Martin makes a mental note to start emphasising the importance of regular meals when (_if)_ they survive this, and tries to ignore the growing blind panic rising in his mind like a tidal wave as no heartbeat greets his straining ear. With trembling fingers, Martin pushes Jon’s hair back and away from his forehead, carefully patting it down and neatening it as he scrutinises his face for any sign of life. Jon has survived a lack of heartbeat before. That doesn’t have to mean anything. He’s not breathing, either, but that’s - it’s fine - Martin hadn’t needed to breathe for three years, and he’s here and living somehow. If he can survive all of this, there was no way that Jonathan Sims couldn’t. Jon is a much more stubborn man than Martin has ever been. He couldn’t - he wouldn’t just give up. Not before Martin found him again. He wouldn’t. 

Martin watches Jon’s eyelids, and waits for them to move, and thinks about sitting in a hospital ward and staring at the most beautiful man he’d ever seen. He thinks about fumbling to write in faltering lines of stilted poetry about a man walking in the valley of the shadow of death, skin brown in the sun and shining like bronze, silver gilding his black hair like a blessing.

Jon doesn’t move.

Martin shuts his eyes, and pulls Jon’s body into his chest, and ignores the tears running down his cheeks as he presses his face into his hair. “You can’t go now. I only just got back! I’m _right here_, and you’re supposed to - this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” He sniffs, and his chest hurts, and Jon lies heavy and small in his arms as a sleeping child. The throne is cold and hard between them, and the power of the ritual is so bright now that Martin can almost feel it burning him. He doesn’t care. Jon’s dead, really dead, and the world is burning anyway. Martin wonders whether he’ll see Gerry, this time. Or if it’ll just be dark and endless as the End had been for Sasha. He thinks about spending eternity without getting to see Jon’s smile again, or hear his voice, or his laugh. Martin clutches Jon’s body tighter.

Elias’s footsteps ring out into the cathedral like the first notes of a symphony. He pauses below the dais, looking up at them with a faint hint of disgust around the corners of his thin mouth. “It’s pointless, you know. We’ve won. You can’t save him now. My Archive will wear his crown, and rule this world as our god intended.” Elias wrinkles his nose. “I’d really prefer it if you didn’t get snot all over him.”

Martin is seized by the irrational urge to stick his tongue out. Instead, he readjusts Jon, stupidly concerned with the comfort of his corpse, and scowls. “Why? It doesn’t care about you. It can’t care about you, that’s not how this works.”

The corner of Elias’ mouth flickers upwards into a smile, and he walks away, to the edge of the room, where Martin can now see a plinth and a basin, beside which sits a beautiful silver crown on a golden table. “_You _ desire affection from your gods, Martin, not me. Don’t project your own delusions onto others, it makes you look imbecilic.” 

Despite himself, Martin flushes, hot and angry and embarrassed, even in the face of the ending world. “No? So what, you do this and you die? Is that it? This is terribly elaborate for a suicide attempt, don’t you think? Couldn’t have just jumped off London Bridge like the rest of us?”

Elias actually laughs at that. “No, Martin. You got scared, didn’t you? No one even realised what you were trying to do. I’ll let you in on a secret, though.” Elias turns, and his grey eyes are too bright in the flat glow of the cathedral. “Your mother guessed. She just wanted to see whether you’d actually go through with it.” Elias’ lips curl. “She was disappointed.”

Nausea rolls in Martin’s gut and he tries to push away the aching pain Elias’ words pull out of him, like netting in the gut of a fish, ripping at the soft flesh of his insides as it goes. He shakes his head. There’s something rising in the back of his skull, some inkling under the growing roar of power building all around them. “So why, then? What do you get out of this?”

Elias turns around with the silver crown in his hands. Its peaks are lancing spears that cut the air, its troughs rippling metal that glitter like a river in the sun. Elias smiles, and cradles the thing in his hands like a newborn child. 

“_Apotheosis _.”

Elias blinks, and in one moment his skin is riddled with hundreds and hundreds of eyes, grey and bright and smiling in the growing glow of his cathedral.

Martin flinches back, jarring his elbow against the throne, and Jon’s body shifts with him. He feels the heavy piercing weight of the Eye upon him, and his skin crawls with it. Every breath tastes of heat and glass. Jon feels electrified, like some strange machine or holy body. Martin’s body is numb where he touches him, and he holds him tighter all the same. Elias begins to step closer, the crown in his hands rippling with strange details and liquid silver blinking eyes. 

Suddenly, Martin knows what to do. 

He tears his eyes away from the crown and Elias, and looks down instead at Jon’s face. Jon’s brow is unfurled and still in death, and his long eyelashes are thick and velvet as a butterfly’s wings. His lips are a dusky pink, and his skin is dark and scarred. Martin feels himself smiling, and curls down to press a chaste kiss to Jon’s forehead. “I really hope this works.” He clears his throat, and looks up at Elias. There’s the faintest hint of a frown on his wrinkled brow. Martin’s smile sharpens a little. “Um, ok, right. My name is Martin Blackwood. I’m - I was a reporter for The Observer newspaper. I was meant to focus on the natural sciences: after Mr Darwins’ book, it seemed like we were achieving new inventions and discoveries every day, and my Editor was especially interested in the more peculiar details of mankind’s advancement. So, when I heard about The Man Who Should Be Dead lying comatose without a heartbeat at University College Hospital, that was, well, it was right up my alley. I, um. I didn’t expect him to be quite so beautiful.” 

“_NO!” _Elias’ voice is shrill and loud in the quiet of the cathedral, and he surges forward like a big cat pouncing, all wire and muscle and teeth. Martin’s breath hitches, but he holds Jon tightly and keeps talking, fast and quiet, even as Elias gets closer and he braces himself for his first blow. The cathedral is empty and bright and shaking with a strange, growing power, and Martin can feel his statement shivering in the air between him and Jon like a glowing silver thread. He tries to blink away the tears in his eyes, and lets his own words carry him like a river, wherever it might end. 

_ “ _ But then you woke up, and, I mean. That shouldn’t have been possible, obviously. And there was this, this power coming off you in waves. And you spoke to me. And you weren’t scared. I mean, I was this total stranger and, well… but you laughed, and you shook my hand, and you told me to call you Jon. I think perhaps I was lost even then _ .” _

Elias gets to the top of the dais, raising the crown above his head like a weapon. It’s glittering silver and sharp as a fistful of daggers, and Martin’s shoulders hunch but he lifts his chin and meets Elias’ eyes, even as Elias spits a guttural snarl between clenched teeth and swings with all his might. 

Elias falls.

Martin blinks, his brain trying to process what just happened even as his mouth continues to move, explaining in detail everything that’s been building in his heart and his mind ever since the day he’d met Jonathan Sims. 

The crown falls, rattling down the great grey stone slabs of the cathedral floor, and Elias grunts as he gets onto his hands and knees. With a flicker, like bats or birds in the early evening, Tim and Sasha reappear between Martin and the throne. Tim is already heading down the steps, cracking his spectral knuckles, when there’s another ripple in the air, and Gertrude Robinson steps out of a tear in reality, grey hair pinned neatly into a bun on the top of her head, a heavy-looking gun swinging in her right hand. Martin has no idea what kind of impact ghostly bullets might have on whatever body Elias wears, but he doesn’t doubt that Gertrude has given it extensive thought. 

And then there’s another ripple, and a man steps out of nothing. He’s tall, and he has long black hair. Martin’s heart skips a beat. Gerry Keay turns, and his eyes are dark and handsome. He looks down at Jon, and his brow furrows into a crease Martin has seen a thousand times before. He tries to speak, and can’t fight past the words being tugged from his mouth like thread from a loom. Gerry gives him a shadow of a smile. “Don’t stop.” His hand moves to Martin’s shoulder, and it’s icy and aching and cold. Martin shuts his eyes, and more tears rush down his cheeks, and he keeps talking. 

“I was Lonely, but I was not alone. Gerry Keay had been my closest friend and confidante for two years, and this was due in no small part to our decision not to mention one another’s strangeness. I think we both deluded ourselves with the notion that what was not spoken was not known. He - I loved him. Dearly. Still, that’s of no matter now. I had met Danny Stoker a year and a half previous, he had just published a book on forgotten ruins: what he referred to as the veins of London, running red beneath our feet. He was terribly charming. I did not know he died.”

Martin watches as the ghosts rush Elias, and he spins and spits and growls, trying desperately to push through their translucent bodies. Martin doesn’t know what they’re doing, only that as they rush and flicker and howl, Elias stumbles and shudders, flinching when Gertrude’s gun echoes with a muffled bang into the cathedral, as if it were being fired from a distant room. Martin rubs his thumbs over Jon’s arms, through the stiff fabric of his jacket, and tries not to think about the brightening light around the throne, like a sunbeam or a spotlight. His mouth is starting to tingle now, numb with the electricity of power, and Martin is quite certain that he couldn’t stop speaking if he wanted to. He can only pray to a god he’s never believed in that somehow this will work. 

_ “ _ I wanted to see you more painfully than I had ever wanted anything, even my freedom. Instead I felt like a child, hiding and listening to you speak about the thing that had - But I believed Gerry. More truly, I believed and knew my own bias. I would put you above everything, including the end of the world. Gerry would not, could not. So at last I met my Editor. And I learned the truth _ .” _

It’s a strange sensation. Martin can feel and see the events he’s recounting, as if he’s been swallowed by a dream. At the same time he can see and feel the cathedral around him and the growing presence of the Eye, so heavy he can feel himself being pressed down into the throne. He can see the ghosts beginning to burn, their forms flickering and rippling. Elias is bleeding from a wound in his side, his blood dark and running fast and thick. Martin can taste the copper in the air, and the iron scent of gunpowder. Speaking now feels like trying to do so with lead weights on his tongue. His teeth and lips and jaw ache, and his eyes burn. His nose stings when he tries to breathe, and he’s distantly aware of his aching lungs.

_ “ _ I did not have time to think about how fully I was giving myself to the Mother, as I used her gifts again and again. It did not matter. All that I knew was that I needed to save you, as I had before. As I had failed to do before. I would not let Prentiss have you, the way she had taken me. I was dead anyway. I had died three years previous, in my flat, of dehydration, whilst Jane Prentiss and her worms laid siege from the outside and no one came to save me. No one even thought to look, including my damned mother, for all her complaints of my absence. Instead Peter Lukas offered me a deal, and fool that I was, I took it. If this second life had served for nothing else than to save yours, then it would have been worth living _ .” _

Tim disappears, and Elias barks a short laugh. “You can’t stop me now! I am at the zenith of my power, and what are you? Weak echoes of weaker people, who lacked even the little strength needed to hold on to your own lives.” 

“Now now, Elias, what have you said about projecting?” Gertrude’s voice is dry and unflinching, and it doesn’t change as she raises her gun and shoots Elias in the shoulder. Elias shouts, and red blood rips down his ruined shirt as the bullet itself fades into nothing but an afterimage. Elias jerks his hand in one rapid movement, and Sasha’s form is ripped in two. Martin manages to wet his lips between sentences, and tries not to choke on his own dry throat. 

Gerry and Gertrude face up to Elias, Gerry hefting a length of dark iron pipe and swinging it like a baseball player. Elias ducks and growls, and flinches when Gertrude raises her gun again. This time, there’s the faint click of an empty barrel, and Gertrude’s face twists. “Damn.” She tosses the gun, and it disappears into the air, even as Elias lunges forward and she steps to the side. Gerry gets in a swing with his pipe, and this time it makes contact, crunching against Elias’ side. He chokes and shouts and snarls, and when he claws the air this time, Gertrude’s form disappears like a reflection in a stream. 

Gerry backs up, putting a few feet of space between himself and Elias, and then the two of them are circling each other like prize-fighters, Elias dripping blood onto the grey stone floor, Gerry’s body rippling and distorting like wet ink running down paper. Gerry glances back up at the throne, “Martin!”

Martin looks down at Jon, trying to find any sense of warmth or movement in his limp body. He can see his own tears on Jon’s cheeks and nose and lips, and his breath stirs a curl on Jon’s forehead, but there’s nothing else as he continues, voice hoarse with how much he’s been speaking, mind wrung out by the weight of every horror and happiness he’s been reliving in double time under the crushing gravity of the coming apocalypse.

_ “ _I knew that Peter would take me. Ghosts are not safe from Forsaken, and I had spent three years living a haunted existence. I had made peace with it, though I could not have anticipated the agony of his fury, for all the times he had unleashed it upon me before. And then Gerry was there, and he saved me, burning like Prometheus spiting the Olympians. I will not say they took him from me, because they did not win. Gerry Keay broke the laws of the gods, and with them the chains by which they bound him. He died. But I believe he died free.

“And then somehow I was alive again, and the world was ending, and you weren’t with me. So I walked into the valley of the shadow of death, and I tasted the comforts of the End, and I learned how neatly the Mother had woven her web for me. And I wanted it, Jon. I wanted it so badly it still hurts to think about. But I needed you more keenly than anything she could give me, and I could not escape the End without paying its sacrifice. So I let her go, and I gave it up, and I lived. For you. 

“And now I’m here, and you’re not, and it’s all over and all I can think is how much I wanted to kiss you.” A sob heaves its way out of Martin’s chest, and his lips are numb but they keep moving anyway, even as he cries. “And I know that’s a stupid, selfish thing to think at the end of the world but I don’t care about Judgement Day and I don’t care about gods and monsters and fears and powers. I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted to be a person with you. I just wanted to love you. 

“I love you, Jon. I’m in love with you. With all my heart, with everything I am, and everything I have ever been, and everything I ever will be. Statement ends, I guess.” Martin sobs again, and feels the thing ripped from his chest with the last words of his statement, body slackening in aching relief as he folds over Jon and cries, shoulders shaking. He shuts his eyes and presses his forehead to Jon’s and weeps, and weeps, and weeps. “Please come back. Please, please, just come back to me.”

The ground trembles. There’s a growing brightness that Martin can see even through his eyelids, one that makes the veins in his skin glow pink and red. He can feel the not-heat of it burning over his skin, and the weight of the Eye on his back, seeing him as he is, in every flaw and fear and failing. He doesn’t care. He holds Jonathan Sims, and he waits for the world to end.

“M-Martin?” 

Jon’s voice is weak and rough and quiet, and it’s like a sunrise. 

Martin gasps, and pulls back, and Jon blinks up at him, squinting. Martin laughs, helpless and wild and utterly bewildered, and Jon’s mouth curves into a hesitant smile at the edges. “What…?”

Martin blinks, and his eyes are hot, and he can’t stop crying and it doesn’t matter because Jon is breathing: Jon is awake and alive and the world might be about to end but Martin doesn’t care. He thinks, in this moment, that nothing could ever scare him again. 

“How dare you.” Elias’ voice is quiet and cold as the edge of a blade on a child’s neck. Martin flinches, and pulls further back, and both he and Jon turn to look down at Elias, getting to his feet on the bloodied stone floor of his desecrated cathedral. “How _ dare _ you.” Elias’ voice is like the hiss of a snake before it strikes, and he moves with deadly purpose towards the dais. Gerry’s tattered ghost fades into the air like the memory of a broken banner.

Martin gets to his feet, and his legs shake. He stands in front of Jon, and feels Jon shifting behind him. There’s a soft, high exhalation of air as he does so, and Martin’s heart tugs at his chest, and he sets his stance wide and firm and curls his hands into fists. Martin Blackwood is not a small man. And he may be human, now, but he’s more than a match for Elias Bouchard. He has to be. 

Elias’ blood drips onto the steps as he comes closer, and Martin doesn’t move. There’s nowhere left to run, and he wouldn’t abandon Jon anyway. He raises his chin and meets Elias’ eyes, and tries not to cower under the fury in them. Elias starts to smile, and it’s not so much a smile as a baring of teeth. “I’m going to make this hurt.”

Behind Martin, Jon starts to get up. “Martin.” Jon’s voice is weak and soft, and Martin clenches his jaw and raises his fists, not taking his eyes off Elias.

“Yeah? Hasn’t occurred to you that you could lose, has it? How well has that worked out for you today?” 

Elias’ face twists into a bloodied mask of fury, and behind him Jon catches his breath. “Don’t antagonise him Martin.” His whisper is angry and urgent and, faintly, exasperated. Martin grins. 

Elias gets out a vicious-looking ceremonial blade, and tosses it lightly in his hand. “Your bravado is almost admirable, Mr Blackwood. But I still Know how badly you’re going to lose this fight.”

Then Elias leaps forward, too fast to follow. There isn’t much space on the platform, but Elias doesn’t stumble, even as Martin crashes backwards into the throne. Elias dances back, eyes bright and glittering, and Martin is confused for a moment before he feels the stinging ache of a long gash in his side, followed by the slow, hot bubbling of blood. He chokes, and Jon makes a soft sound of distress beside him.

“Martin!” With a grunt, Jon starts to try and stand, but Elias has already moved in again. Martin tries to move to the side, and trips, catching himself heavily on the steps with a shout. A deep stabbing burn of pain sinks into his shoulder, then pulls out with a sickening lurch, and Martin coughs on bile as he falls forward. Blood spatters onto the stone with a dribbling series of wet smacks. 

Elias laughs, “I told you this would hurt.” There’s movement again, but this time nothing lands. Martin blinks away the sweat and tears in his eyes as Jon huffs, and Elias’ dagger glances off his collarbone, cutting a stripe of red beneath the hollow of his throat. Elias growls, “Get out of my way, Jonathan. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I really don’t think that’s your problem, love. Do you?” Peter Lukas’ voice is loud and cheerful over their pained breathing, as he steps out of the empty air. Dizzily, Martin stares up at him, and Peter spares him one icy glare before turning to Elias. “Such a disappointment, Martin.” Then Peter grabs Elias by his collar and lifts him bodily off the ground, as if he were little more than a child. “Now, love. About that ritual of yours.” Elias grunts, swinging his blade, and Peter catches his arm and twists it with a vicious crack that sends Elias’ dagger flying through the air to fall with a clatter and a red line of blood down the stone steps. Peter shakes Elias like a dog. “I thought we had an agreement. I believe you called it a _ceasefire._” Elias tries to speak, red faced and gasping, but before he can, Peter hurls him bodily at the far wall. Martin stares, but Elias’ body disappears into a gaping mouth in the air that drips creeping fog into the empty cathedral. Peter follows it, and the mouth shuts and evaporates into nothing but the memory of a scar above the stone.

Still standing on the dais, Jon slumps, then turns to Martin, rushing down the steps to crouch beside him where he’s fallen, hands fluttering over his face and the wounds in his side and shoulder, which burn cold and wet as they bleed. “Oh, God, Martin. Are you - you’re obviously not alright, that’s idiotic, I don’t, how do I, damn it.” Martin turns, and lets himself lie on the steps. They feel oddly comfortable, though he suspects that’s only thanks to the distraction of the wounds in his body. He smiles weakly up at Jon, and past him, at the massive eye in the ceiling, that sits closed and powerless above them.

“I think we did it.” He says, and tastes the salt and copper of blood in the back of his mouth. Jon stares at him, and his eyes are dark and wet and wide with panic. 

“Y-yes.” Jon breathes, and his body shakes with the exhalation. “Yes, I think we did. But you’re - Martin - you’re bleeding.” Jon’s mouth sets into a firm, unhappy line. Martin reaches up to touch his face, and his hand is red and wet with blood. Jon leans into his palm anyway, and his cheek is soft and warm. 

“Yes, I had noticed. It’s alright, Jon. You’re alive.” Martin runs his thumb over Jon’s cheek, and Jon’s eyes flutter shut for a moment. He lifts his hand to wrap his fingers around Martin’s wrist, his thumb rubbing gently over the back of his hand, holding him close.

“Again, thanks to you.” Jon gives Martin a wry smile, and presses his hand to his cheek. The fading radiance of his god gilds his head in a gentle grey light. “What would I do without you?”

Martin snorts, and it hurts, and he coughs and it tastes like salt and copper, and Jon’s brow turns up into a worried mess of creases. “Blow yourself up, probably.” He frowns, and squeezes Jon’s cheek. “Please stop doing that.”

Jon huffs a quiet laugh, and adjusts himself on the steps. “I’ll do my best.” He stares at Martin, and his eyes are dark and warm, and Martin thinks Jon knows everything about him, and he hopes that it’s enough to know how very deeply he loves him. Jon opens his mouth, and hesitates, shutting it again and glancing away, down at the cathedral floor and the silver crown, kissed red by the pool of blood in which it sits. 

“What is it?” Martin breathes. His side feels numb now. It’s better than the dragging ache of his blood pouring out of him. His head is light and dizzy, and he can feel the coming dark of unconsciousness. He thinks he should probably do something about the bleeding, or ask Jon to. But all he can bring himself to care about is whatever Jon’s trying to say. 

Jon purses his lips, and breathes in through his nose. He says, “I -” and hesitates again. Martin tries to ignore the aching bruise of his shoulder. Jon frowns, and his nose wrinkles as he does so, and Martin smiles stupidly up at him and doesn’t think to hide it. Jon’s mouth pulls up at the corners in an answering smile immediately, and Martin’s heart flutters in his chest. “Martin, did you -?”

“Oh my god, Martin!” Georgie Barker’s voice is loud and entirely unexpected in the quiet, and both Jon and Martin flinch as Georgie and Melanie step out of a bright yellow door in the stone beside a fifteen foot tall spiralling sculpture of a creature with long, long fingers which is of no clear gender nor, from several angles, human at all. Then suddenly the women are with them, and Melanie is applying pressure to Martin’s side, and it hurts and he grunts and falls clumsily into unconsciousness.

The last thing Martin sees is Helen, head tilted 180 degrees, copper red hair dripping like flame against the grey stone, waving at him with long twisted fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And now I’m here, and you’re not, and it’s all over and all I can think is how much I wanted to kiss you. And I know that’s a stupid, selfish thing to think at the end of the world but I don’t care about Judgement Day and I don’t care about gods and monsters and fears and powers. I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted to be a person with you. I just wanted to love you._
> 
> _I love you, Jon. I’m in love with you. With all my heart, with everything I am, and everything I have ever been, and everything I ever will be. Statement ends, I guess._


	27. Moving Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who's read this fic, left kudos, bookmarked it and left comments. It really means the world to me. Thank you to the people who've made fanart for this story!!! Whether you've posted it or shown it to me privately, I adore it, and I'm so grateful and happy for the fact that my writing inspired other people's creativity. It's the best feeling in the world. Thank you.
> 
> I also want to shout out [this playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7reE4Sv3nZDC6bXocPQ7Bq?si=GjqK586_QWq3uZ-cpsl9fw) by [dorknewton](https://dorknewton.tumblr.com/) \- I listened to it on repeat whilst writing this fic, and I think? It might be my favourite TMA themed playlist.
> 
> I started writing this fic in April 2019 - it took me 5 months to finish it, and another 2 months to edit it (with help from my amazing beta readers, A and [BromeliadDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BromeliadDreams/profile)). It's been 10 months, and it was so much work, but I think it was worth it. Thank you for all your support and kind words, I hope this story gave you joy!

With a feeling like falling, Martin Blackwood wakes up from a long and impossible dream.

He’s lying in a bed. The mattress is far softer than his own, and the covers smell of cotton and detergent. Martin breathes, and he feels the air rushing into his lungs and through his now moving blood. In his chest he feels the heavy weight of his heart. His side aches, and feels stiff and tacky with stitches that pull at his skin as his belly swells with each breath. His shoulder is a long aching bruise and Martin finds himself already dreading the thought of moving it. His mouth is dry and tastes like cotton, and his eyes are sore from too many tears. He squeezes them shut in an effort to dispel the discomfort, and hears a soft intake of breath and the creaking of a chair as someone moves in it. 

There’s the sound of footsteps on the carpet, very softly, and then there’s a warm hand touching his cheek, light as a feather, gentle enough that it’s almost imperceptible. Martin’s chest hurts, and it is for an entirely ordinary reason. He feels his mouth starting to pull up into a smile, and there’s a long exhalation in the air above him, and the touch on his cheek gets a little firmer, a thumb gently brushing the side of his face as Jon says, softly, like a prayer, “_Martin _.”

Martin opens his eyes.

Jonathan Sims is above him: his eyes are dark and brown and gold where they catch the evening light spilling copper and orange over the bed. His face is mapped with faint scars and creases. His hair is a black sea of tumultuous waves, threaded through with silver. He is, objectively, beautiful. He is, objectively, alive. 

“Jon,” Martin says, and his voice is hoarse, and he doesn’t know what else to say. Jon gives him a small, soft smile, and squeezes his cheek for a moment before pulling away. Every inch of Martin aches with the loss of him, but Jon doesn’t go far, pouring Martin a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside table before coming back and helping Martin sit. He doesn’t hesitate to touch him, gently slipping an arm behind his back as Martin moves to lean against the headboard, and doesn’t quite swallow the grunt of pain that escapes him as the movement pulls at his injuries. Jon gives him an apologetic smile, dark eyes flickering up worriedly to his face before looking away.

“Here, drink. It’ll help.” Gently, Jon lifts the glass of water to Martin’s lips. The glass is cool and hard and heavy against Martin’s dry mouth, and he drinks gratefully, the water easing the burning in his throat like a blessing. When Martin’s had enough, Jon takes the glass and puts it back down on the table before returning to Martin’s side. His eyes are wide as a child’s, “How are you feeling?” He’s almost whispering, and the lavish space of what Martin presumes is Georgie Barker’s spare bedroom soaks up the sound as if it’s nothing: as if all there is left in the world is the two of them. 

Martin gives Jon a smile, and ignores the aching burn of his injuries. “I’m fine. Are you alright?”

Jon shuts his eyes and huffs a soft laugh, running his scarred hand up and over his face as he shakes his head. “You’re a ridiculous man.”

Martin wouldn’t try to stop smiling even if he could. He’s looking over Jon anyway, searching for some stiffness in the way he holds himself, or the telltale geometry of any bandages under his clothes. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Jon opens his eyes, and looks at Martin, and his mouth is crooked in half a smile and it’s imperfect and awkward and lovely. “I’m fine, Martin. Would it kill you to worry about yourself, for once?”

It’s Martin’s turn to laugh at that, and Jon’s smile drops for a moment before pulling back up again. Martin shrugs, and it hurts, and he winces, and Jon lifts his hand as if to stop him before hesitating in the air between them. His fingers curl, and they’re long and dark and elegant as a pianist’s. His other hand hangs twisted and burned at his side and Martin loves him, more than he has ever loved anyone. Jon meets his eyes. Martin says, quietly, “Either we’re alive or this is heaven, and I don’t think I’m going to get the latter, so…”

Jon huffs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Martin.” When he notices that Martin’s still watching him, he lets his hand fall, and his fingers flex and curl loosely at his side before he slips his hand into his trouser pocket. “We’re alive.” Jon dips his head, before looking back up at Martin. The embroidery on his waistcoat catches the growing pink light of the setting sun. “You saved us. All of us.” Jon hesitates, and wets his lips. “Me.”

Martin leans back against the headboard, and looks out of the window at London. The rooftops are dripping golden light, and the sun is painting the sky red and pink and newly beautiful. A flock of pigeons jump from a nearby church spire and scatter the sky with silhouettes like spilled ink. Faintly, he can hear movement downstairs, and the soft sound of voices. Even quieter, outside, the distant clip of horse hooves, and shout of dogs barking, and murmur of voices in the street. Martin curls his fingers in the covers, and they’re soft and stiff and real. He lets out a long, shaking breath, and feels all his fear and all his pain and all his grief going with it. He shuts his eyes. “We did it.”

Jon steps forward, and Martin opens his eyes, and Jon is standing over him, cut slender and handsome and gilded gold by the tall window at his back, face full of shadows. “You did it, Martin.” Jon opens his mouth, and Martin watches him, and he hesitates. Jon steps back a little. “Do you - do you think you can stand? I don’t mean for us to go far.”

Martin raises his eyebrows, and thinks about it. He feels...well, impossibly enough. He feels strong. And his injuries hurt, but they’ve been treated. He feels loud and noisy and hot and human. He leans forward, and his muscles ache, but they don’t tremble. He nods. “Yeah, I think so.” 

* * *

Jon gives Martin space to dress, which is a task that is both more uncomfortable and more time consuming than Martin would have wished. But when Jon comes back, he does so with a fresh cup of tea, and Martin takes it gratefully, half surprised that the women aren’t with him. At Martin’s questioning look, Jon flushes, deep red on his dark cheeks, which only makes Martin raise his eyebrows higher. “They want to give -” Jon catches himself and clears his throat, flush darkening and climbing up over the shells of his ears, “They want to give you a little space. To, um. Readjust.” Judging by his blush, Martin’s fairly certain Jon knows what a terrible lie that was, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he decides not to question it. Instead he lets the warmth of the cup in his hands seep into his skin, and drinks a little more of his tea, relishing the sweet comforting heat of it. 

“So,” Martin says, when Jon doesn’t break the silence. “Now what?”

Jon’s flush returns in a heartbeat, and he looks away when Martin meets his eyes, hands smoothing over the dark satin of his waistcoat before one flutters up to push a stray curl behind his ear. Martin tries not to smile and doesn’t entirely succeed. Jon doesn’t notice, gesturing instead to the doorway and clearing his throat. “It’s, um. This way.”

Jon walks to the door, and stops in the hall to look back, expectant. Martin follows him.

Jon doesn’t take him far, as he’d promised, though the journey does involve one short flight of stairs that has Martin sweating and pressing one hand to his side by the top. Jon waits for him there, chewing his bottom lip, and Martin gently reassures him as he waits for the slow waves of pain to fade into something manageable. When they have, he gestures for Jon to continue. Jon does, opening a white painted door intersected with panes of thick clouded glass.

The smell of vegetation fills Martin’s lungs as thick and hot as the scent of baking bread from an open oven. Martin blinks and stares. There’s a greenhouse here: huge and full of thick, heavy plants with dark waxy leaves and great, heavy flowers, pink and yellow and violet, nodding in the twilight of the coming night. A great glass roof stretches like a bird cage up above their heads, open to the evening sky. Through it, Martin can make out the first bright stars of the night twinkling into the dark. Just inside the door, Jon looks at him, and he isn’t flushing now, but his eyes are bright and dark and watching Martin closely. He holds out his hand. Martin takes it, and the scars beneath his fingers are rough and rippling. Jon squeezes his fingers, and Martin squeezes back, and follows him inside.

The greenhouse smells sweet with the honey of fresh flowers and the earthy scent of compost. Martin breathes deeply and tries to take all of it in, and finds that he can barely do so. Jon speaks quietly as he leads him further inside. “Georgie loves this place. I didn’t - well, I did - but I tend to prefer libraries. And then I, I suppose I learned to find comfort in living things like this. And I just, thought, well. After, all of it.” Jon stops and makes a soft sound, something like a tut, before continuing. “I was trying to think of the opposite of the Lonely, and short of a crowd or a ball which,” Jon stops, glancing back at Martin, and gives him half a smile, “I, that’s not really my, ah. Natural habitat. So.” He gestures, at the tall, crowded banks of life all around them, thick and green and thriving. They turn a corner, and there’s a wicker bench, covered in cushions. On either side of it are two small tables covered in candles, which twinkle golden in the dark like earthbound stars. Jon guides Martin to the bench, and Martin sits gratefully. They’re almost directly beneath the highest arch of the conservatory’s roof, here, and the bench is a little raised: enough that he can see the rooftops of London through the glass, and the sky stretching out deep and blue around and above them, surrounding the greenery of the room in which they sit. 

Carefully, Jon sits beside him. There’s less than a foot between them, but Jon sits curled and hunched and tense, and Martin doesn’t make an effort to close the gap. Jon looks at him, and his hands flicker from his lap to the back of his neck and then to the cushions beside his thighs, squeezing them quickly before he looks out at the garden and his shoulders lower a little. His narrow chest lifts and falls in a quick, deep breath, and Martin sits and waits. Jon says, “I was thinking. You - you’re human, now. Um, more than you were before.” He glances at Martin, and Martin nods. “And, with Elias, and, Gerry - I’m so sorry.” Martin gives Jon half a smile, mostly to reassure him, and tries not to think about his best friend. Jon continues. “Well. I don’t suppose you’ll have much interest in returning to work at The Observer.”

Martin laughs, more out of surprise than anything. He hadn’t even considered the fact that he was now technically unemployed, and it wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting Jon to say. “Oh. Right. Yeah, no, I - I mean, I don’t think I can? I’m guessing whatever contract I was on wasn’t exactly above board, considering the circumstances. And I mean, it’s not like - well I don’t suppose,” Martin stops, thinking now. He has some savings, enough to hold out on the flat for a month or two. But eventually the money will run out, and he needs to eat again. He needs coal, he won’t live through the winter without it. And the money won’t stretch as far when he’s spending it on anything else. He’s pulled out of his growing panic by Jon’s hand, warm and soft and firm on his.

“Martin.” Jon says his name firmly, and Martin looks up and into his eyes. Jon smiles at him, and behind him the sky is deep and dark and blue and scattered with stars. “It’s alright.” Jon hesitates, and looks down at their hands, and then his jaw sets in a determination that Martin recognises. Jon swallows, and takes another deep breath. “I’ve been thinking. Would you like to come and work for us? With me? I don’t how much Elias was paying you but -”

“Yes.” Martin says, immediately, without thinking. He doesn’t need to. Jon blinks and his face slackens for a moment before he smiles, shyly, mouth curling crooked. His hand squeezes tightly around Martin’s, and Martin’s feels his cheeks flush with warmth.

“Right. Excellent, well. Right.” Jon frowns, shutting his eyes, and his smile falls and returns almost immediately. “Right.” Jon turns back to Martin, so he’s facing him, and takes Martin’s other hand with his own as he leans forward, nearly crossing the space between them. “Martin, listen. I know you wanted a normal life. And I don’t know how but I think you’re free, now. And you can go. You can have that.” Jon pauses, and looks into Martin’s eyes. “You deserve that. You’ve done enough.” Martin blinks, throat suddenly thick with something like grief. Jon continues, thumbs rubbing anxiously over the backs of Martin’s hands. “If you stay here, with me, I can’t promise that you’ll be safe. I can’t promise we’ll survive this. And, I don’t think I’m human any more.” Jon looks away, and there’s a terrible, deep shadow of loss that falls over his face as he says it. Martin presses his hands, and Jon looks up at him and gives him half a smile. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Martin laughs, softly, and Jon grins at him, teeth bright in the dark. “But I must confess,” Jon hesitates, and takes a deep breath, and meets Martin’s eyes. “I don’t want to do it alone. Martin, I -”

Distantly, muffled by the floorboards and the roof and the vegetation, the soft sound of a piano creeps up and into the air around them. The melody is slow, and sad, and gentle. Jon breathes, and smiles, and shakes his head. “I love you. I love you, Martin, and I think you should go but I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to leave me. And I know that’s stupid and selfish but -”

Martin kisses him. 

Jon catches his breath, and he’s warm and hard and awkward, and Martin doesn’t care. He lets go of his hands to lift his own to Jon’s cheeks, gently cradling his face, and after a moment Jon moves and clutches at his shirt, pulling him closer. It’s clumsy and stiff and Martin can’t quite ignore the pain in his shoulder and his side, but that really doesn’t matter because Jonathan Sims is kissing him like his life depends on it. Because Jon is alive, and he loves him, and they’re together. So Martin shuts his eyes and lets the world spin away into the dark and focuses only on the warmth of Jon beneath his lips and under his hands and thinks this is enough. This has always been enough. 

Eventually, Martin pulls back, and Jon chases his lips and his eyes are dark and wide, and he’s staring at Martin like Martin’s something precious. Something beautiful. When Jon speaks, his voice is low and rough and barely a whisper. “So I take it you’ll stay?”

Martin laughs, and holds him, and feels a tear roll down his cheek as he leans in to kiss him again. “Yes, Jon. I’ll stay.”

* * *

It’s still strange, Martin thinks, to walk into a cafe and find it crowded. This one is bustling with people going about their mornings, and smells richly of cinnamon and tea. The clatter of cutlery and porcelain is percussion under the symphony of softly murmured voices, and the early morning light is honey on the tabletops. It’s gentle, and comforting, and Martin suspects that’s by design.

It isn’t difficult for him to find the person he’s here to meet. She’s sitting alone at a small table, wearing a dark grey bonnet and a black dress. She’s terribly thin, as an invalid really, and there’s a faint curve in her head that her bonnet doesn’t quite conceal. Martin is half amazed he never noticed this before, but then he supposes that was by design too. It’s sort of a modus operandi, for a creature like Annabelle Cane.

Martin doesn’t hesitate: he walks briskly to the table and sits opposite her. “Miss Cane. You asked to meet me?”

Annabelle gives him a faint smile, and gestures with one long dark hand to the hot cup of tea sitting on the table in front of him. “Martin. It’s good to see you. Tea?”

Martin takes the cup before he’s thought about it. The china is smooth as silk and warm under his hands, and he isn’t surprised when he finds the tea made sweet and milky and exactly to his taste. He sets down the cup, and feels the memory of threads as he does so. He bites the inside of his cheek, and swallows. “Thank you. Ms Cane, I don’t mean to be rude, but may I ask what this is about?”

Over Annabelle’s shoulder, Martin sees a yellow door standing in what had been a plain white wall mere moments previous. Annabelle doesn’t turn, but she gives Martin another gentle smile. “An improbable ally. The Spiral tends to do whatever it thinks is least likely at any given moment. At this point, I’d say helping you is rather predictable of it. Don’t you think?”

Martin shrugs. The thought has occurred to him repeatedly over the last few months, but he doesn’t fancy his chances in a fight with Melanie. All he can really accept is that Helen is a known unknown, and that he’s watching her. “It’s not really my business.”

Annabelle taps the table, slowly, in an even rhythm, and gives the varnished wood a small and secret smile. “No, I’m sure it isn’t.”

Martin resists the urge to start bouncing his knee. “Well?” Outside, it’s begun to rain, and the rush of it washes in when the door opens with a fresh handful of customers taking shelter from the weather in a loud chattering of shedding coats and remarking on the sudden cold. The wind gusts in with them, and Martin shivers. 

Annabelle smiles and looks down at the table. Her black eyes give away nothing. Martin doesn’t look away, even when Annabelle lifts her sharp chin and meets his eyes. “I believe you owe me a favour.”

This is not unexpected. Martin sits back in his chair, and attempts to feign some sort of surprise. “Do I?”

Annabelle laughs, and the sound is high and girlish. “Come now, Martin, don’t play the idiot. Not with me. I know you, remember. I know you better than anyone.”

Martin hums and tilts his head to the side. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

Annabelle raises an eyebrow. “Your little eye? Please. He knows only the what, never the why. Facts don’t make a man. Principles do.”

Martin snorts, ungainly and not entirely deliberate, and he covers it quickly. “And you know my principles?”

Annabelle gives him another smile, and it’s sharp and cruel. “I know you, Martin. I know every fear, every doubt, every desire.” Her voice drops low and smooth and familiar. “I know what and who you want and how you want them. I gave them to you. I gave _him_ to you.” Martin’s stomach turns.

“Stop that.” He doesn’t quite mean it to come out as loud and sharp as it does, but their neighbours at a nearby table don’t look up. Annabelle’s smile grows crooked and mischievous.

“Afraid your happy ending was by design, darling?” Annabelle picks up her tea, and it sits daintily cradled in the web of her long thin fingers. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Everything is.”

“If you’ve done anything to Jon -” Martin begins, and Annabelle laughs again, waving him off, though there’s an unhappy turn to her mouth when she stops.

“Please, as if Elias would allow anything to sully his precious little idol. Not without his consent. I offered, of course.” Annabelle smiles into her tea. “I imagine he regrets refusing now.”

Martin can’t quite resist the curiosity pushing at his tongue when he asks, “Where is he? Do you know?” His mouth fizzes with the question after he’s asked it, and Martin tries not to think about it. It’s been happening more ever since he started working for Ghost Hunt UK. Annabelle’s thin lips curl. She takes a moment to drink her tea before she answers him.

“Lonely.”

“Still?” 

Annabelle shrugs her narrow shoulders, and the dark fabric of her dress whispers as she does. “They’ll get over it. They always do.” Martin decides not to question her further, despite the weight in his mouth pressing him to do so. He clears his throat instead, and moves in his seat. 

“So what do you want with me?”

Annabelle sets down her cup with a soft tap on the wooden table and tips her hand to the side, fingers uncurling. “I think the better question is: what do you want from me, Martin?”

Very, very faintly, Martin can feel the old familiar tug of a thread in his chest. It doesn’t hurt, but his heart aches with the loss of it as it sings to him with everything he could have. There’d be no need for worry, or fear. Jon would never leave him, could never leave him. Martin could protect him. He could protect all of them and keep them safe. He could be powerful. He would never be helpless again.

He’d never be alone again. 

When Annabelle smiles at him this time, it’s the smile of an old friend, and Martin cannot ignore the rush of affection that rises in his chest to greet her. He can almost feel the reassuring weight of threads around his fingers. He can almost trace the map of them in his mind: the familiar, instinctive understanding of where each one went. The world, mapped out and understood, waiting at his fingertips. It’s beautiful. It’s safe. There’s a whispering shift of fabric, and Martin looks up and sees Annabelle is leaning forward. Her hand is outstretched on the table between them, open and inviting. It’s that simple. All he has to do is take her hand. Martin smiles. 

“No, thank you, Ms Cane.”

Annabelle flinches back as if he’s hit her, and he feels the thread in his chest snap. Martin tries not to wince, and isn’t entirely sure he succeeds. The cafe around them is loud and chaotic with movement and Martin can’t make sense of it and that doesn’t matter. He’s free. 

Annabelle’s mouth twists downwards into an ugly scowl. “How dare you.” Suddenly, Martin feels the constricting weight of a thousand invisible threads around his torso. Behind Annabelle, the yellow door opens, just a little, and five long thin fingers curl around the wood.

Martin doesn’t panic. “You’re not going to do that, Ms Cane.” Annabelle raises her eyebrows, and her fingers curl, and the threads tighten and steal his breath away.

“Really.” Annabelle’s voice is flat and she sneers when she speaks. Martin gives her a polite smile.

“Really. Do you want to know why?” It’s difficult to speak, with the feeling of his chest being crushed, but Martin manages it. 

Annabelle’s mouth is shut so tightly her jaw is trembling, and when she speaks she does so sharply, biting the words into the air between them. “Humour me.”

“You need me.”

The threads loosen, suddenly, just for a moment, before they tighten again. Annabelle scoffs. “I beg your pardon.”

Martin smiles at her. “You need me. You wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble if you didn’t. I don’t know if it’s because of Jon, or because of me, or some other strange and terrible machination about which I know nothing. Quite honestly, I don’t really care. I just know that you need me, alive and human and free to make my own choices. So you’re not going to hurt me, and you’re not going to turn me into one of your little puppets. You’re going to let me get up and leave this place and we’re going to be, well, allies, I suppose. But we’re also going to be equals.”

Annabelle narrows her eyes. “You overestimate your own significance, Mr Blackwood.”

Martin shrugs, and it’s a stiff and awkward movement with his arms pressed with bruising force to his sides. “Maybe I do. But I’m not dead yet, and my friends are rather anxious about my safety, so I suggest you let me go, before one of them does something..._ unpredictable. _”

Annabelle stiffens. Behind her, the yellow door opens a little wider, apparently escaping the notice of the cafe’s more ordinary patrons. For a moment, the threads tighten, so sharply that Martin can feel them threatening to split his skin. Then all at once they loosen and disappear, and Annabelle sits back in her chair with a sharp sigh. 

Martin rolls his shoulders, relishing the loss of restriction. Behind Annabelle’s shoulder, the fingers creep back behind the yellow door. “Well. Now that’s sorted, perhaps you’ll do me a favour and redeem this morning from being a colossal waste of both of our time by telling me the real reason you want my help.”

Annabelle folds her arms and looks at him, biting the inside of her cheek. She blinks, and for a second there are eight liquid black eyes scattered across her cheeks and forehead in the shadow of her bonnet. Martin doesn’t flinch, and she sighs, looking away from him and across the clattering cafe before turning back and leaning forward once more. “Have you ever come across an Entity referred to as The Extinction?”

* * *

When Martin gets back, Jon is waiting for him. The Admiral winds himself between Martin’s legs with a loud meow, and Jon laughs a little as he does, taking Martin’s coat. “He missed you.” 

Martin raises his eyebrows. “Is he the only one?”

Jon rolls his eyes, and gets up on tiptoes to press a quick chaste kiss to Martin’s lips, as he has done every day since they survived the last apocalypse. Martin blushes again anyway. Jon drops back down onto his heels and smiles at him. “Welcome home, Martin.” 

Martin smiles, and follows Jon inside. Melanie and Helen are sitting in the living room playing chess, though by what rules Martin isn’t sure, as none of the pieces are where he expects them to be. Helen has her head cocked to the side like a bird’s, and for once Melanie’s shoulders are loose and low. She smiles when Jon and Martin walk past the door, and Helen waves as they go. They reach the kitchen, and Georgie grins at them both, copper hair loose from her bun and messy around her face. Jon takes the kettle from her as she heaves it from the fire, filling up a generous china pot, and Georgie bends to scratch the Admiral’s ears as he trots over to press against her skirts. 

Martin picks up the tray on which Georgie has already set the teapot and cups, a small jug of milk and a pot of sugar, taking it through to the living room whilst Jon and Georgie follow behind him, quietly speaking to one another about the events of the day that he’s missed. The house is warm and bright with the heat of the fire and the light of the oil lamps. Outside, the sky is fresh and crisp and bright with the late Autumn sun, spilling clear light like water over London, washing the stone and glass clean. 

Helen and Melanie pause their game, and Martin and Jon hand out the tea, the smell of it rich and sweet in the room over the smoke of the fire. Georgie sits in a plush chair by the table, and the Admiral hops into her lap. Jon wraps his hands around his tea, and looks at Martin. There’s a yellow door in the far wall that should by all rights open onto nothing.

“So?”

Martin presses his hands to the smooth china of his cup, letting the heat of the hot water inside slowly seep into his hands, still cold from the afternoon air. “Well, the world is ending again.” Melanie scoffs, quietly, and Helen gives her a sharp crooked smile. Georgie watches him patiently, one hand resting lightly on the Admiral’s head. Martin takes a deep breath. “But I think I have a plan.”

Jon lifts his chin, and his eyes are dark and bright and faintly gold in the afternoon sun. “Tell us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We lived._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Reminiscences of Martin Blackwood, Post Mortem: Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638068) by [rosy_cheekx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosy_cheekx/pseuds/rosy_cheekx)


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